There are a number of extensions likely to happen within the next ten years.
1) Traditional extension to Stockport from East Dids.
2) Tram-Train pathfinder to Heywood via Castleton (this is probably the most likely).
3) Tram-Train pathfinder to Hale from Alti
4) Tram-Train pathfinder to Wilmslow from Manchester Airport, although the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2 puts a spanner in the works for this one.
M5000s are not technically in production anymore, but then it was the same when batch 7 was ordered. I suspect if you threw enough money at Alstom they’d be willing to build more of them*. The question is would you want to build more? I suspect the answer to that question is no.
The M5000 is now an ancient design, and is really starting to show its age. A lot of its onboard systems are very much obsolete, resulting in difficulties obtaining certain bits during the construction of batch 7.
Theres also the fact that it hasn’t been the huge success story everyone hoped it would be. It’s not particularly suited to a lot of our network, and whilst it works, as a design it isn’t exactly happy about it.
What we need is a longer, heavier duty vehicle, more akin to a street running capable Stadler 555, so effectively a 398 with more doors.
*The magic number last time being an order for 26 vehicles, so we ordered 27.
Indeed. A single vehicle of the same length as the existing doubles would immediately give a capacity uplift on those routes where doubles already operate at the maximum practicable frequency, by creating passenger space to replace two cabs and a coupler. This in turn allows more M5000s to be cascaded onto routes where capacity isn't quite so critical.
The new vehicle would also have tram-train capability, either from day 1 or with design provision for adding the necessary equipment later. This would preferably be a modular design allowing addition of either a 25kV transformer or batteries, depending on what routes were converted and how battery technology had progressed in the meantime. A single length tram probably wouldn't have enough space for either.
Surely the priority should be to convert existing poorly used suburban heavy rail lines to Metrolink and replace 1-2 tph low quality dmu services with 5 tph electric Metrolink trams/tram-trains, e.g. the lines to Atherton (with conversion of the busway from Walkden to Leigh) and to Marple Rose Hill. There could even be a branch off the line via Reddish to Stockport, which would be of more value than approaching Stockport from the west.
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Extending Metrolink to Hale will be messy and complicated by the line's use for a lot of heavy freight traffic. There is also likely to be very little demand; Hale Village is served by just 1 hourly minibus (a Mellor Strata).
The Pathfinder schemes look to be low risk "toe in the water" suggestions which don't cost the earth and can be walked back if they go wrong. I would expect Hale to be part of a scheme to convert the parallel single tracks through Navigation Road to a double tram-train track, thus removing a bottleneck on the system. This would of course require all Altrincham line services to be tram-trains, realising the capacity benefit of the longer single vehicle, unless the Timperley turnback was brought into regular use.
Atherton conversion needs a major investment to link the route to the rest of Metrolink, which probably puts it into a notional "tram-train phase 2", only to be take forward if the idea of tram-train is shown to work in a place where both the heavy rail and the tramway networks are more complicated and busy than they are in Rotherham.
Having looked at both in the past, I see an approach to Stockport from either east or west as relatively similar in technical difficulty (there is a reasonably credible route that avoids the development beyond East Didsbury). But the eastern option requires a Marple line tram-train conversion, which is another larger scale scheme needing major construction to join it to the rest of Metrolink, and the extra benefit of connecting it to Stockport is probably less than it would be via Didsbury. The freight issues on the Marple line are of similar difficulty to those on the mid-Cheshire.
Extending Metrolink outwith Greater Manchester to rural Styal and prosperous Wilmslow, where much of the population drives Chelsea tractors, is futile; the minimal bus provision there is a good indication of how little public transport is used in East Cheshire.
I agree, the electrified routes to the south make sense to remain as heavy rail.
