I found the following on the Met homepage:
> NIGHTLINK TRAMS HAVE FINISHED
>
> Thank you to all passengers that have used NightLink trams
> over summer. The success of the service will be examined,
> and hopefully NightLink will be back for next summer. To
> all those passengers that didn't purchase tickets - it's
> your fault if its not!
What are other people's experiences with the Night Trams? We seemed to hear
very little about them, both in this newsgroup, and in official publicity.
Here are a few of my observations:
>From the few times which I used them, fare evasion seemed to be rife;
hardly anybody bought a ticket that I noticed. Anyone know what the
official figures were? One tram a friend of mine caught stopped in the
middle of the Light Rail line, and the driver turned out all the lights and
just sat there until everybody had bought a ticket! I think they should
enforce front-door boarding and let the driver sell tickets.
For the first few weeks, the trams were flying along at 60 - 70 km/h. It
was great, and I got home in no time. Then, it seems that someone must have
had a word, because they all seemed to slow down to their daytime speeds.
This is plainly ridiculous, as there is hardly any traffic on the roads at
3am.
The advertising of the service was almost non-existant. There were posters
at some Railway Stations, a couple of ads in In-Press magazine, and a small
sticker applied to the tram stop sign. No timetables or frequency
information was placed on the stops. Interestingly, when I caught a tram
home at about 3am on the last day of operation, the maintenance crews were
out peeling the stickers from the signs (at 3am!!!).
Even the Met homepage had no timetables and only an oblique reference to
the service.
All in all, I thought it was a great service, but extremely poorly promoted
and with virtually no enforcement of ticket sales. I really hope that it
comes back next year, and some of the shortcomings are fixed.
Regards,
Mike Alexander
(malex@bigfoot.com)