More room for tram passengers to stand

Interior of the new trams that will be running to Oldham in two years’ time. They will carry the same number of passengers but will have 30 fewer seats.

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There will be 30 fewer seats on Metrolink’s new trams which will carry Rochdale passengers within two and a half years.

Although the 200 capacity is roughly the same as the old trams running on the network at the moment, only 52 passengers will find a seat in the rush hour, making life a lot more unpleasant for the 150 others who will be standing.

The first of the 40 £2m trams on order was shipped from its makers, Bombardier, in Vienna in July and others have been arriving regularly since.

The new trams have fewer seats, full-length glass double doors, and a yellow and silver colour scheme.

The new look was developed by Manchester-based design agency Hemisphere which chose yellow because of its “traditional association with confidence and optimism which echoes Greater Manchester’s attitude and values”.

The model, which already operates in several European cities, including Cologne, Bonn, Rotterdam and Stockholm, will run on the existing system as well on the new lines to MediaCityUK (open in summer 2010), Central Park and South Manchester (spring 2011), Oldham Mumps (autumn 2011), and Rochdale and Droyslden (spring 2012).

Meanwhile, builders have finished clearing the site for a new Metrolink tram depot in Old Trafford which will have room for 40 trams and will cover more than 67,000 square metres — around the size of 10 football pitches.

The final building on the site — a former bakery and packaging company which had been derelict for more than a decade — has now been demolished. The site of the new Metrolink depot is sandwiched between the tram line to Altrincham, Ayres Road and the new line to Chorlton in South Manchester.

The original depot in North Manchester will also be expanded to house some of the new trams.

More than twice as many trams will run across Manchester city centre when the new lines open with most city centre stops will have trams calling at them at least every three minutes during the daytime in both directions.