Tyne and Wear Metro

The Tyne and Wear Metro is an overground and underground light rail rapid transit system serving Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, and the City of Sunderland (together forming Tyne and Wear). The owners Nexus have described it as "Britain’s first light rapid transit system". The system is currently both owned and operated by the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive (Nexus), thus is fully under public ownership and operation.

The Metro was originally conceived of during the early 1970s, incorporating much of the earlier infrastructure formerly used by the Tyneside Electrics suburban network, with some elements dating back as far as 1834. Construction work began in 1974, the majority of this activity being centred on the building of new tunnels and bridges that linked with several preexisting railway lines that were converted. In parallel, a purpose-built fleet of Metrocars was procured. The first section of the Tyne and Wear Metro was opened during August 1980, although construction of the original network was completed in March 1984. Early on, Metro operations were integrated with local bus services, although this practice ended with the deregulation of the buses during the late 1980s.

Multiple extensions to the original network were promptly worked upon; the first of these, from Bank Foot to Newcastle Airport, was opened during November 1991. A second extension, from Pelaw to Sunderland and South Hylton, was completed in March 2002. By 2013, the network comprised a total of 60 stations (these being a mixture of underground and above-ground stations) across two lines, covering 77.5 km (48.2 mi) of track. While the Metro has largely been operated by Nexus directly, for a period between 2010 and 2017, it was operated under a concession by DB Regio instead; upon the expiry of the contract, it returned to being operated by Nexus.

During 2016, Nexus launched a programme to replace its existing rolling stock, which dates back to the 1980s. Under the Metro Flow scheme, announced in March 2020, works costing £103 million are to increase the service frequency from five to six trains per hour, reduce journey times and improve reliability levels. The first replacement Class 555 articulated light rail train entered passenger service on 18 December 2024.