The Tyne and Wear Metro will be closed between Pelaw and South Shields from Monday 12th September until Saturday 3rd December as part of the Metro Flow project which will see three sections of single line doubled to allow the service frequency to be increased and to improve reliability across the network. The 12 week closure is the biggest major line closure ever seen on the network.
The £104 million Metro Flow project – which includes £95 million of funding from the Government’s Transforming Cities Fund – will see three sections of single track dualled between Pelaw and Bede. The three sections are Pelaw-Hebburn (800 metres), Hebburn-Jarrow (1.4km) and Jarrow-Bede (600 metres). Not only will this work enable extra Metro services to run in the future but will also give more resilience to the network as normal services will be able to resume quicker.
Cathy Massarella, Major Projects Director at Nexus, said: “This is the longest and biggest planned closure on Metro that we’ve ever undertaken in 42 years of operations. The £100m Metro Flow project involves a massive programme of track dualling, which can only be carried out during a three-month major line closure. It is never an easy decision to close such a large section of the network for such a long period of time, but this is the only way that we can effectively deliver the track dualling works.
“I would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding while these works are taking place. The closure will run from Monday 12 September until Sunday 4 December. Customers will need to plan ahead when the line closure is in place. Allow plenty of extra time for your journeys and there will be frequent replacement buses running, which includes an express service between Heworth and South Shields.
“The work will see three pinch points on the Metro network eliminated by the dualling of an existing freight line, which will become part of the of Metro’s own infrastructure.This also gives us the scope to examine future opportunities to expand the network to other areas that are currently not served by Metro.”
There will be a frequent replacement bus service in operation with service 900 calling at all stations in the affected area and the X900 running an express service from South Shields to Heworth.
The work is due to be carried out by Buckingham Group Contracting Ltd.