Isn't that a sign of success? If they're full and standing, then people clearly want to use the services. If they were useless then the crowding would discourage people from travelling.
What stops there being extra double tram services? Are you arguing that HR would have meant longer trains at the same frequency?.
I suspect that inadequate rolling stock provision is down to the sort of penny pinching which you have spent the last several weeks arguing strongly in favour of, while at the same time trying to play down the actual flaws of any LR system in Britain, whether current or proposed.
Would passengers rather have somewhere marginally nicer to sit, or to get to where they want to go faster? People don't want to linger around transport systems. They want to get somewhere.
You know the aviation market demonstrates this perfectly. People want cheap and frequent. There is competitive pressure for airlines to go no-frills because people don't really care that much about a few hours of discomfort if the tickets are that much cheaper in the first place.
Can you please explain to me how providing a covered place for people to sit would slow Metrolink services down, or make system operations prohibitively expensive ? You are descending into self-parody. Oh, and as I pointed out before, Metrolink isn't actually very cheap for pasengers, compared to Northern services around Manchester.
Metrolink causes rain now. Lovely. As far as I'm aware, Metrolink stops typically have a canopy for some rain protection. People are pretty used to being out in the rain.
Remind me again where I said that Metrolink causes rain?
I note that your comments on the provision of canopies are qualified with 'as far as I'm aware'. I'm starting to wonder if you knoe Manchester any better than you know South Wales. In fact, a number of Metrolink stops have bus-style shelters, while others have fully enclosed waiting facilities in ex-HR station buildings, of the type you would probably dynamite aa being too luxurious for people outside London.
I know that you are determined not ti engage with how real humans actually behave, but you might want to think about those comments about sitting in the rain again. Do you think that gettinv drenched for their sins will attract people back to a particular form of transport? Or will they use another form of transport - including for the vast majority of people a metal boxwith 4 wheels which goes brrrm brrrm - the next time they make the same journey ?
They couldn't have been provided on HR. They might have been possible with a cross-city tunnel but at much, much higher costs.
You argued that Metrolink is such a poor service that people in Manchester wouldn't use it. Clearly, people in Manchester do use Metrolink.
As I have repeatedly said, yes, people use it, because there are still people who want to leave Altrincham or Bury by public transport. To argue that a light rail service must be popular, good quality etc because people no longer use an HR service which no longer exists is an interesting position.
Not everyone in South Wales has access to a car, or wants to have one. Lots of people would rather use cheaper and more convenient public transport. A cleaner up in the Valleys might actually rather like having a direct LR service all the way to the place they work running early and late, rather than being dependent on an expensive and unreliable car.
So you are planning a transport system not on the basis of trying to attract people out of their cars, but on the basis of providing as basic a service as possible on the assumption that there will always be someone who has no choice but to use it. Do you wanr to actually see modal shift occur, or, as your repeated arguments in favour of downgrading public transport everywhere but London suggest, is cutting up-front spending the onky thing which worries you?
What if Gladys decides to get the bus to this cleaning job? Plenty of people travel very long distances on buses in Greater Manchester rather than make the same journey by Metrolink.
