ModernRailways
Established Member
- Joined
- 21 Apr 2011
- Messages
- 2,050
if rumours are to be believed there is a good reason for this. T&W metro has a pretty big problem with the windows being kicked out by kids. Unfortunately they can’t make the windows any harder to kick out as this is actually a safety feature to allow emergency egress so they instead have taken away any points near windows onto which you can grab onto and swing your feet at the windows. (This is how the kids are doing it). This does leave 2 problems in my mind; how do the passengers safely stand up during the journey and how do you kick the windows out in a real emergency? Both of these I’m sure will have been thought of by the designers… you’d hope.
Not at all, windows are kicked out, and occasionally the seals fail. It's a design limitation on the current fleet whereby the windows are basically helped in by a piece of rubber. The new fleet will have the windows essentially as part of the body so kicking them out will take some doing. In an emergency, evacuation will be done via a door, same as at present.
It’s worth remembering when comparing the two, that TfL and indeed the south gets far more funding than Nexus and the North ever will. Staffed stations are simply not an option, however I do wonder with the introduction of the new trains whether staff may be introduced on trains, the current issue being that you require at least four staff members per train because of the split cars.
All staff on the system work in pairs (or should) and generally don't perform revenue duties if it is just two. Of course if there's anti-social behaviour on the other carriage to two staff then it'll be missed at present whereas on the new stock it won't.
From my experiences(albeit not as often as I used to because I moved location), the main rough areas tended to be on the yellow line, especially the Byker-Whitley Bay section and Pelaw-South Shields. My experiences between Pelaw-Sunderland(hardly ever went between Sunderland-South Hylton so can't comment on that bit) usually involved drama free journies so surprised some would consider that as a line to avoid. Of course some stations do attract their own issues with Regent Centre I believe to be a known problem area and no doubt there is others.
If going by the metro twitter account though, the main anti social areas is the yellow line on the North side of the river and probably be somewhere to avoid after 6pm.
There are particular hotspots around Meadow Well and North Shields, but the majority of the rest of the system is fine and sees little spurts of anti-social behaviour every now and again but nothing major, the line down to South Hylton is generally fine but if they see staff some of them will then decide to act up but that's more of a staffing issue as that line is very rarely staffed especially in evenings.
The main issue is there's a lot of teens with nothing better to do, especially at the minute. The trains are warm and it's an easy meeting place for friends so why not just ride around. The majority aren't bad, but you get the odd group who will try and act tough and they cause damage. Since they've figured out that they can kick out windows very easily they just keep doing it, likely to prove to their mates they're not to be messed with The big issue is lack of funding, the Metro Police Unit has ~9 officers to cover the entire network 24/7 (not including annual leave/sickness etc), you then have the lack of Metro staff and the majority of staff, including drivers, now being new so not fully up to speed on dealing with these types of things.