At the last meeting of Bury Council my colleague Cllr Tim Pickstone raised the issue of Metrolink lifts being out of order (particularly an issue for our area at Besses and Heaton Park stations). This followed on from an issue raised by a local resident who was fed up of Metrolink not providing any customer information to people when lifts were out of order.

At its worst, a passenger, for example in a wheelchair or with a heavy pram could find themselves ‘stranded’ on a platform with an out of order lift.

The answer from Transport for Greater Manchester?: “If a lift is found to be out of order by a customer, then Metrolink encourages them to ring customer services who will initiate a process to resolve the matter as quickly as possible and then ask our Control Room to log this. An electrical department will send out an engineer to assess the situation and we will try to get these issues rectified as soon as we can to avoid any inconvenience to customers. In the instances where lifts are out or order for an elongated period of time, Metrolink will work to inform passengers via PAs and work closely with the lift supplier (if, for example, parts need to be ordered) to ensure problems are rectified speedily.”

All this is good enough, but I don’t think its good enough! we don’t see why a tram (either a driver or an automatic announcement) cannot be made to passengers on a tram informing them that a lift is out of order, enabling them to make a decision about their journey (for example to proceed to a station with ramped access).

The Council’s rep on TfGM (Cllr Joan Grimshaw) agreed to raise this issue with the appropriate authorities.