LIGHT RAIL
O ALL CHANGE AT NEXUS
ver the next eleven years, the Tyne and Wear Metro system
will change almost beyond recognition. Around £350 million worth of investment will change the face of the highly popular public transport system and will mean that passengers will be able to enjoy a safer, faster and more accessible system.
“Back in 2006 we realised that we needed to do something which was fundamentally different with regards to the way in which Metro was funded,” says Ken Mackay, Nexus director of rail and infrastructure.
“Metro was developed in the 1970s and opened progressively between 1980 and 1984, then extended to Newcastle airport in 1991 and subsequently to Sunderland in 2002. This means that the basic issue with Metro is
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that it is in effect around thirty years old from an operational point of view, although much of the infrastructure has been inherited from British Rail.
“Additionally, the system also includes a lot of 160 year-old structures such as North Shields tunnel and Howden viaduct, which is a wrought iron structure that we have invested nearly £2 million pounds on, to have it repaired, shot blasted and painted. This means that we have a lot of heritage infrastructure, along with the 30-year-old infrastructure which is coming up for renewal. And all of this is happening at the same time.
“This means that the amount of money which we were going to need to spend on Metro was going to be far greater than anything we had ever spent before. Added to this, we had
the problem we were only ever funded on an annual basis, which meant that we never knew from one year to the next how much money we were going to be able to spend on the system. As a passenger transport executive we have to consider what offers the best value for money and if you are given very short time horizons, then it is very difficult to do that.
“We submitted a business case to the Department for Transport in January 2007 which basically said that we need to address the quantum and security of money for Metro, or else we feared the that the system would progressively begin to fail and that we may have even seen some parts of it shut completely. Although this kind of thing is very difficult to predict, we thought that this might have begun to happen as early as 2015.
The refurbishment programme taking place on the Tyne and Wear Metro system is one of the most ambitious light rail projects taking place in Britain at the moment, providing better services and also – given the economic circumstances – much needed investment and employment. Rail Technology Magazine spoke toKen Mackay to find out more
“We then received a very positive response to the business case and a conditional approval to proceed with our plans, which required us to do a number of things. Firstly we were asked to separate train operations from infrastructure management and then to undertake a procurement exercise to ensure value for money by putting out a tender to operate Metro to the marketplace.
“As part of this, we insisted that we were able to put together an in-house bid, as we had been operating Metro up until that point and really wanted to put ourselves to the test in terms of what we could achieve against the private sector. It also meant that over time we would improve our knowledge of the condition of the system such that we could refine an asset renewal plan over a longer period of time.
Oct/Nov 10
All images courtesy Nexus
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