Supertram: Mayor says public control is ‘the right thing to do’ despite the risks

Stagecoach has run the light rail network since 1997 but in March will hand over control to a company set up and owned by South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA).

The tram network has not been profitable since 2019, due to a significant drop in passenger numbers, and millions of pounds of funding is needed to replace ageing trams and upgrade tracks and stations.

SYMCA said the new company, South Yorkshire Future Trams Limited (SYFTL), is predicting £6.3m loss in 2024/25. But it expects financial pressures to ease as energy prices fall and ticket sales increase.

Mr Coppard said bringing the trams back under public control “is a downpayment on our ambitions for a different type of transport network”, during a meeting of SYMCA.

The Labour mayor said there were plans to improve services, making them more affordable and reliable, and expand the 29km network beyond Sheffield and Rotherham.

“It does come with risks and we will need to manage it properly and invest in securing and growing the network,” he said.

“But it is absolutely the right thing to do if we want to build a bigger and better economy across South Yorkshire.”

He added: “To make sure people have the opportunity to move about our region quickly and cheaply, to take traffic off our roads and to improve the air quality, we need an effective and efficient mass-transit network.”

Supertram, which operates 2,650 services each week on four routes, was used by almost 15m passengers in 2010.

But by 2019 that number had fallen to 11.5m.

Passenger numbers plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic and the latest figures suggest the network is now used by fewer than 10m a year.

Supertram was owned by a public body when it opened in 1994 but it was privatised and sold to Stagecoach three years later.

The £240m network was extended to create a tram-train service that reaches Rotherham in 2018.

In October, SYMCA announced it had secured £100m of funding to maintain and upgrade the tram lines and other infrastructure but “significantly more” is needed.