TravelSafe: 800 fines handed out on Manchester’s transport network after spike in anti-social behaviour

Over the past month the TravelSafe Partnership (TSP) has been running a campaign which has been raising the profile of the special operations that are being run on a weekly basis across the network to deter anti-social behaviour and crime.

The partnership is jointly led by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and Greater Manchester Police, with support from operators, local authorities and British Transport Police.  

Tens of thousands of people have been spoken to by Metrolink and police officers since the beginning of October, with more than 800 fines issued and over a dozen people arrested.

With an expected increase in the use of trams across the region during ‘Mad Friday’ (17 December) an operation took place at Manchester Victoria today.

TfGM’s head of resilience and TravelSafe, Lucy Kennon said: “Currently we’re seeing a huge uplift in youth related anti-social behaviour.

“Compared to 2019 those rates of incidents involving young persons have more of less doubled.”

The campaign hopes to shine a light on the work of the TSP and the security features that are in place to help prevent and tackle crime and ASB, such as the 5,000 hours that police officers and transport staff spend every week patrolling the networks, or the 3,800 CCTV cameras that feed into TfGM and Metrolink’s control rooms that operate 24hours a day, 365 days a year.

TravelSafe teams will continue to carry out intelligence-led deployments at key points across the public transport network to deter antisocial behaviour and increase passenger confidence.