£1,000 fine for putting your feet on tram seats

METROLINK passengers who put their feet up on tram seats are to be fined £1,000 as part of the operator’s tough new approach to bad behaviour.

Targeting customers who can’t keep their shoes to themselves - classed as a byelaw offence under Metrolink regulations - will form part of a major crackdown on nuisance behaviour, a Metrolink boss has confirmed.

It comes as the operator prepares to levy £1,000 fines starting in the new year on passengers who, for instance, swear, vape, get too drunk or litter.

Aline Frantzen, Managing Director at KeolisAmey Metrolink, told a public meeting that in January and February they would start out targeting behaviours ‘that bother customers the most.’

But she said a later wave of action would tackle other bad traits, including feet on seats.

She added: “It’s a very big change for Metrolink because we haven’t gone hard before, we have taken a softer route for quite a while.

“This is the beginning of our new approach to good conduct, it’s not the end.

“’Feet on seats will happen at some point.

“We are not focusing on it in the first two months but it will happen.”

Aline was responding to Councillor Steve Gribbon, who slammed ‘feet on seats’ as a behaviour that got his goat.

The member for Marple North told the meeting: “Feet on seats is a real bugbear for me. Some people put their feet on the seat and sit sideways. I can’t see how that’s even comfortable. First it’s damaging the seat, and second it’s a nuisance for people who want to sit there. It may put them off sitting down. It’s my biggest bugbear.”

Councillor Doreen Dickinson, chairman of the Metrolink and Rail Networks Sub Committee, added: “And you don’t know where people have had their shoes.”

Last month, the M.E.N. reported on Metrolink bosses’ new tough approach to nuisance behaviour.

Their initial focus has been on key byelaws that already exist on the network. But while flouting them in the past would likely only result in a dressing down, passengers will now be prosecuted and forced by a court to dig deep and cough up.

In the year to July 2018, there were 520 reported byelaw offences across the Metrolink network. The most reported offences were throwing objects, verbal abuse and improper use of emergency door handle activation.

Transport for Greater Manchester’s (TfGM) Metrolink Monsters campaign first appeared in March.

At the time, it focused on annoying behaviours like sneezing without covering your face or talking loudly on your mobile phone.

This time, it’s been ramped up to cover illegal behaviours, represented by new monsters such as Smoky Joe, Drunken Duncan and Vaping Vera.

The monsters appear at stops, adverts inside the trams, across social media and on the Metrolink Monsters website. They will also appear on cards that TravelSafe Officers are handing out to those found breaching the byelaws.