Metrolink’s new service to south Manchester will not start for at least another week, Transport for Greater Manchester has said.
A key part of last weekend’s work to prepare the line for passenger service this week could not be completed.
Engineers and technicians from Thales, the contractor delivering a new tram management system, will now need to re-schedule this part of the testing and commissioning for the coming weekend (2-3 July).
Philip Purdy, Transport for Greater Manchester’s Metrolink Director, said:
“I am sorry that we’re going to have to disappoint people this week but we have to make sure we have done all the testing and commissioning before we welcome passengers aboard.”
All the new lines will be controlled by a new state-of-the-art tram management system. This allows more trams to run more reliably on the network, making it much easier for drivers and controllers to manage and respond to different scenarios.
The benefit to passengers will ‘be more consistency in the arrival and departure of services, particularly at busy times’.
The control of the existing system also needs to be upgraded so it can match these capabilities and passenger benefits.
Philip said: “The new system has to ‘talk’ to the existing system. The problem is that the new system is as advanced as the current system is old, so it’s a bit like connecting your modern PC to a Commodore 64 and making them work together at this higher level.
“We were able to do some preparation and commissioning this weekend but the available time didn’t allow us to complete the integration testing of an upgrade.
“Frustratingly for us and our customers this upgrade then caused a fault on the existing system which meant we had disruption this morning. We have done many similar upgrades in the past without any problems.”
Susan Wildman, Transport for Greater Manchester’s Director of Communications and Customer Services, added:
“We have said all along that this is a very technical and complicated operation and that we can only start passenger services when it’s completed.
“We are almost there but it will be at least into next week now before we know how soon the new line will be open for business.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t make as much progress this weekend as we’d planned and I apologise in advance to our Altrincham line passengers for another weekend of disruption from Saturday (2 July). We’ll be putting on replacement buses of course.”
The new south Manchester line, with stops at St Werburgh’s Road, Chorlton and Firswood, will give passengers a 15-minute link from Chorlton to St Peter’s Square.
Metrolink’s £1.4 billion expansion and improvement programme is the largest single investment in public transport outside London.
It will deliver the largest tram network in the country, one three times the size it is now with a line beyond Oldham to Rochdale, one to Ashton-under-Lyne, and to East Didsbury and Manchester Airport, with a second line across Manchester city centre.
