Resigning is for ‘quitters’, according to the director of the Metrolink Peter Cushing who took to Twitter this morning and defended himself against accusations of ‘woeful’ service.
Mr Cushing answered commuter complaints about overcrowded trams, fare increases and delays as he seeks to improve the Metrolink service through a social media Q&A.
One unhappy tram user Steve Flitcroft questioned whether Mr Cushing should still be in a job after running such a ‘woeful’ service.
“Any company would do exactly as we are doing in resolving the problems. Resigning is for quitters, I intend to make this work,” Mr Cushing responded.
The main issue with commuters was overcrowded trams with a lack of carriages on busy rush hour routes and after late night events.
“We monitor passenger numbers and as we introduce more new trams we are looking to increase the number of double units on the network. We recently added two more to the morning peak,” Mr Cushing explained.
“We have run later services on occasions and they are not well used. We need to retain a reasonable gap in service to be able to carry out essential maintenance.
“We are working with various venues to run later services after special events.”
Another concern for passengers was the high amount of delays especially at Cornbrook and the lack of explanation for cancellations.
“We always try to be honest and accurate with announcements, however, peoples’ perceptions differ and delays as a result of an incident will vary across the network.
“We have an extensive technical team working through the issues at Cornbrook and the underlying problems are being dealt with.
“Cornbrook is our busiest junction and has an unusual combination of topographical issues. This created a lot of technical issues which we are resolving.”
Mr Cushing also defended fare increases pointing out the Metrolink are self-funded as they don’t want to be a strain on public resources.
Mr Cushing hopes to keep customers informed through twitter on developments of the Metrolink service by creating a regular question and answer session.
Image courtesy of firing up the quattro, with thanks
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