Manchester’s Metrolink was set to return to ‘normal’ today — but driver availability meant delays hit the network by 7am.
On Monday, the service was forced to run a ‘Sunday timetable’ after overnight checks found 43 trams had been damaged.
However, bosses announced that repairs had been completed to the affected trams, and they hoped to run a ‘normal’ schedule on Tuesday.
“Repairs to damaged trams took place yesterday and we plan to operate a normal service today, Tuesday 27 July, subject to driver availability,” a statement from Metrolink at 5:45am said on Twitter.
Despite the work of the service to fix the damaged trams’ pantographs — the electrical pick-up on the roof of each vehicle — other problems quickly emerged later on Tuesday morning.
By 7:15am, ‘minor delays’ were seen on three lines on the network.
That was alongside planned engineering work on the Eccles and MediaCityUK lines, resulting in only four branches running as normal.
“Due to driver availability and Covid-19 we are currently experiencing minor delays on the Altrincham, Rochdale and East Didsbury lines,” another tweet from Metrolink, posted at 7:06am, said.
Recently, transport chiefs have been grappling with a huge degree of staff absences — with one in five of the network's workforce off in mid-July.
At the time, the pandemic was blamed for the shortages — as many staff had either contracted Covid-19, or come into contact with someone with the virus.
“Like many operators, Metrolink is experiencing a rise in Covid infections and staff members being asked to self-isolate through track and trace,” Transport for Greater Manchester’s head of Metrolink, Danny Vaughan, said on July 15.
“Currently just under 20 percent of the workforce are absent, which is having an impact on the number of services we are able to run.
“We are adapting services where we can to limit the impact as much as possible across the network and all available staff are working extremely hard and doing their best to keep things moving.
“We’re sorry for any delays, but hope passengers understand and bear with us at this time.”
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