‘Rugby’ tram was a scrum

One of our readers got in touch after the international rugby match at Murrayfield at the weekend to explain the difficulties he had when accessing the tram to go home after the match with his two children. 

You will no doubt have noticed that Edinburgh Trams have put out warning notices on each rugby weekend so far, advising passengers that the service would be very busy around the times of the beginning and end of the match. They also increase the frequency of trams on the line to cope with extra passenger numbers.

Our reader said: “The situation that occurred was that the queueing system has a massive bottleneck at the Murrayfield stop for the trams. We were travelling back out to the Ingliston Park & Ride. At one point the queue narrows down to be about three people wide.

“This means that you have several thousand people trying to get through a very narrow gap.

“At one point whilst holding both my children’s hands we were being pushed from behind by some fairly bulky people (probably ex-front row forwards!) and at the same time the person in front stumbled backwards.

“My daughter aged 11 was VERY upset and was frightened she was going to be crushed and started to hyperventilate. My son (7) was also very unhappy about the situation.

“I felt it was very dangerous.”

We understand that the reader is to make a formal complaint about his experience to Customer Services at Edinburgh Trams.

Meantime we put his points to Edinburgh Trams who acknowledged they were very busy on Saturday with the spectators from the rugby match, but claimed they were prepared for the event.  Our photo was taken at a day earlier this year when they practiced for such an occasion with volunteers.

A spokesman for Edinburgh Trams said: “We’re sorry that this passenger had a bad experience.  We’re happy to take feedback from our customers and we adapt and develop our service after each major event to improve our service.”