36 Open Access
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‘Metrolink ready for a new order’ ( RAIL 826) prompts a few comments.
There appears to be some confusion about adding rail-based capacity in the city centre, with no mention of 3CC as an obvious solution.
The article appears to imply that sharing tracks with Network Rail is an alternative to tunnelling beneath the city centre. It plainly isn’t, and neither (conversely) is tunnelling an alternative to track-sharing anywhere else.
Cost comparisons are irrelevant. In any case, if one imagines the dropping of St Peter’s Square tram complex into a massive underground space, the magnitude and futility of the task become evident. Apart from the cost, the loss of accessibility, of transit presence and of intervisibility would be huge disbenefits.
The network’s capacity constraint is not, for the time being, confined to the city centre. Cornbrook can hardly be described as a city centre location, yet that is where the system’s strangulating pinch-point is going to be unless something is done about it.
I do not believe that five or six tram routes with frequent packed double trams can be funnelled successfully through one platform per direction at Cornbrook, an increasingly busy interchange hub.
Stop dwell times will have to be controlled with a rigidity that may be unachievable. Such a compact interchange working efficiently would be a joy to behold, but I fear that any disruptions or special events will easily tip the balance towards stagnation, and I do not want to witness that. There needs to be a solution in the pipeline.
Demand for Metrolink has been persistently throttled. Any use of pricing to control demand is a breach of faith. So is any denial of access to people in significant catchment areas traversed by trams, and ‘hiding’ of the trams in suburbs because of capacity panic.
On Metrolink, additional stops are needed at Gorse Hill, South Brooklands and halfway between Martinscroft and Benchill, to name only three. This would be as effective as extending the system, but at less cost.
Stop/station signposting and stop/station visibility need to be radically upgraded in parts of the suburbs, to show people their trams and to grow patronage. For example, Didsbury Village tram stop is located almost at the heart of the community, but is well hidden, poorly marked and inadequately signposted. Similarly Stretford, Chorlton, Trafford Bar, Sale and Altrincham.
Demand will grow when an economic upturn occurs, when increases in development and in labour force mobility are stimulated by Metrolink, when network-wide (and nationwide?) penalty-free bus/tram/train integration for multi-modal journeys is achieved, when bus services are re-regulated and/or re-structured to feed Metrolink, and when Park and Ride facilities are expanded. The system needs to be ready for all of these eventualities.
Overcrowding has been a persistent feature of Metrolink since its earliest days, when Westminster’s parsimony savagely cut the fleet size down to the bare bones, resulting in the stranding of passengers by one overflowing service after another on a routine basis.
Reliability measures ought not to be confined to the provision and punctuality of advertised services. For the system to be truly reliable, passengers need to be able to actually get on the trams when they arrive. There should be a key performance indicator, with associated penalties, for occurrences when trams leave passengers behind at stops because of capacity shortfall. And let us not forget that overspill of passengers at doorways lengthens stop dwell times, constraining capacity even further.
There is plenty of justification for pride in what has been achieved so far, but at the same time there is no room for complacency.