Tram Safety

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) on securing this important debate, and I know the whole House would wish to join me in offering our condolences to the families and friends of all who lost their lives or were injured, many of them very seriously, in the tram crash of November 2016. It has been suggested that the Government have not been active and energetic on this issue, and I am happy to respond in detail to rebut those suggestions. Let me remind the House of the incident and describe the follow-up actions we have taken.

On Wednesday 9 November 2016, the London Tramlink tram No. 2551 travelling from New Addington towards East Croydon overturned on the approach to Sandilands tram stop on a curved track that has a permanent speed restriction of 20 kph. The tram at that time was travelling at approximately 73 kph. Of the 70 people on board, seven lost their lives and 62 people were injured, 19 of them seriously. Following this tragic accident, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch undertook an investigation, as is normal practice in these types of incidents. RAIB is independent and its investigation and report do not apportion blame or liability. Its sole purpose is to ensure lessons are recorded and learned in order to improve safety and prevent future such accidents occurring.

RAIB published its report into the tram-overturning incident at Sandilands on 7 December 2017. Its investigation identified that the immediate cause of the tram overturning was that it was travelling too fast to negotiate the curve, and the causal factors for that were that the tram did not slow down to a safe speed before entering Sandilands south curve because the driver did not apply sufficient braking. RAIB’s report states that, although some doubt remains as to the reasons for the driver not applying sufficient braking, RAIB concluded that the most likely cause was a temporary loss of awareness of driving task due to a period of low workload. It is also possible that, when regaining awareness, the driver became confused about his location and direction of travel. RAIB found no evidence that the driver’s health or medical fitness contributed to what happened, but stated that, although highly unlikely, an undetected medical reason cannot be discounted. Of course, as the hon. Lady made clear, further investigations are continuing and I know the House will understand that it would not be appropriate to say anything further on this issue.

The RAIB investigation did, however, find that the risk of trams overturning on curves was not properly understood and so there were insufficient safety measures in place. It also found that many of the fatalities and serious injuries were as a result of falling through the windows or doors as the tram overturned.

As the hon. Lady made clear, the RAIB report made 15 recommendations to help to improve safety on UK trams. These recommendations relate to action in five main areas: the need for modern technology to intervene when trams approach hazardous features too fast or when drivers lose awareness of their driving; the need for operators to promote better awareness and management of the risk associated with tramway operations; the need for work to reduce the extent of injuries caused to passengers in serious tram accidents and to make it easier for them to escape; the need for improvements to safety management systems, particularly to encourage a culture in which everyone feels able to report mistakes, including their own; and the need for greater collaboration across the tramway industry on matters relating to safety.

That is why one of the main recommendations in the RAIB’s report was for the Office of Rail and Road to work with the UK tram industry to develop a body to enable more effective UK-wide co-operation, in what is inevitably a varied sector, on matters related to safety and on the development of common standards and good practice guidance. UK Tram, which is the voice of the light rail sector, and the Office of Rail and Road called a meeting of the industry in London last year at which it was agreed to establish an independent review group to consider the RAIB recommendation regarding setting up such an industry body to be responsible for ensuring better co-operation on light rail safety and standards.

At a further meeting held in Manchester in January this year, the Department for Transport, the Office of Rail and Road, tram system owners, operators and infrastructure managers convened to discuss the way forward and how the sector as a whole could take responsibility for and ownership of proceeding with the recommendations arising from the RAIB report. At that meeting, the independent review group reported its proposals for a light rail safety and standards board to be formed. The review group also proposed that there was a need properly to scope the new organisation and its function, structure and budget, particularly with regard to funding.

The board has now been created to provide expert support to the light rail industry in this country and to take forward sustainable improvements in the safety and efficiency of tramways and light rail systems. It will also oversee the work to undertake the recommendations from the RAIB report, and its primary functions will include risk analysis, informing industry decisions and sharing best practice; codification and development of standards and guidance; establishing relationships with other light rail jurisdictions around the world; light rail innovation and research; collaboration with other industry safety bodies; safety, accident and near miss reporting, collation and analysis; reviewing industry dissemination of information and lessons learned; and oversight of competent persons and accreditation.

The hon. Lady suggests that the Department for Transport has not provided funding or been active in ensuring that the recommendations from the RAIB report have been implemented, but let me assure the House that that is not the case. While the board was being set up, the Department allocated £250,000 to UK Tram in July this year as an interim payment to ensure that progress on working through the recommendations could begin quickly. I am pleased to report to the House that work on the recommendations is being taken forward by the sector. The light rail safety and standards board steering group has now developed a business plan setting out the functions of the full board. A board of directors has been elected and a chief executive officer has been appointed. The Department received a further funding proposal from the board in late October—that is, five or six weeks ago—and I am pleased to say that we are looking closely at this request and I expect to make an announcement shortly.

Meanwhile, a range of other work is under way. UK Tram has defined a programme to develop a light rail risk analysis model that can be applied to all UK tramway systems and, where appropriate, to other light rail systems. UK Tram has let a contract with consultants after the steering group agreed the terms of reference for this project, and work has now commenced on the development of this risk model. UK Tram has also reviewed the availability of technical devices for automatically monitoring and/or controlling the speed of a tram on the approach to junctions and other key locations. We expect a full report to be published by UK Tram next week. Building on work undertaken by Transport for London, UK Tram has reviewed the availability of driver vigilance devices—also named driver inattention devices—which could monitor the alertness of a driver and detect when they are likely to lose concentration. Again, a full report is due to be published for UK Tram members next week. I am also pleased to inform the House that all tramway operators in the United Kingdom have reviewed all bends and curves on their systems and introduced countdown speed restrictions and chevron signs on the approaches, where required.

In order to identify means of improving the passenger containment provided by tram windows and doors, UK Tram and the operators have been in discussions with manufacturers to see whether improvements can be made. The information that they have gathered so far indicates that laminated windows could be fitted—albeit, as the hon. Lady has mentioned, at extra cost and, more problematically, extra weight—to new vehicles. For current tram fleets, fitting a protective film to the windows would help to reduce risk.

Regarding doors, most UK tramway systems have more modern vehicles with doors that have fully welded construction, which offers far more structural integrity and should aid containment in the context of a crash. Operators have also reviewed their emergency lighting, and suppliers have been able to offer a cut-off switch that is covered and not exposed in the event of an impact. Most suppliers stated that they could also offer as an option internal lighting with integral energy storage in the lighting units, if required. Progress is being made on the recommendations from the RAIB report.

This is an important issue at an important moment. Light rail is popular, as can be seen from the statistics: more than 267 million passenger journeys were made on the eight light rail and tram systems in England in 2017-18. The sector prides itself on being one of the safest modes of public transport, and it strives to maintain high standards in safety. The safety record speaks for itself. Until this accident occurred in 2016, no passenger had been killed on a tram since January 1959. The Government are committed to ensuring that industry and the regulator apply the lessons that have been learned so that a tragedy of this kind can never happen again.

Question put and agreed to.