Metrolink boss says sorry after 'catastrophic' incident causes days of disruption

The boss of Metrolink has apologised after passengers have faced four days of disruption. It comes after an overhead line came down near Victoria station at 'the worst possible time' on Sunday (June 11), while festival goers were partying at Parklife and football fans prepared for Soccer Aid at Old Trafford.

Engineers have since been working around the clock to restore full service on the Bury and Rochdale lines, but the problem has not been easy to fix. With hopes that services could finally be running back as normal tomorrow morning (Thursday), head of Metrolink Danny Vaughan told the Manchester Evening News he is 'very sorry' to passengers who have faced disruption.

"It has been a very, very complicated repair, which we're not quite through yet," he said. "But we're aiming to get a full service back up on Thursday morning.

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"It is not the norm. I'm pretty confident that we've done works last year and this year which will see reliability grow and our reliability performance numbers do prove that this is not the norm, but I definitely apologise to passengers who have been affected this week."

Parklife organisers had planned for the event to take place with no trams running at all, with industrial action expected to take place on the same weekend. It meant that additional buses were put on to take partygoers away from Heaton Park, with 160 buses in use rather than 120 as normal, even following the late decision to call off the Metrolink staff strike.

Mr Vaughan admits the decision to use extra buses was 'very fortunate' given the carnage unfolding near Victoria station, and meant that transport bosses received 'very few complaints' from people