A new plaque has been unveiled at Newcastle Central Metro station to commemorate Professor Tony Ridley, the man who helped to make the Tyne and Wear Metro system a reality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Professor Ridley, originally from Sunderland, died in March aged 92. He is credited with being the main driver of the Metro project in its early years, and without his leadership it may never have happened.<\/p>\n
The plaque was unveiled by members of his family in a ceremony at Central Station on Friday 16th<\/sup> October.<\/p>\n Cathy Massarella, Managing Director of Nexus, said: \u201cIt is an enormous honour for us to remember Professor Tony Ridley with this commemorative plaque at Central Station.<\/p>\n \u201cHe made an extraordinary contribution to transport across his career. He took Tyne and Wear Metro from an idea into a reality.<\/p>\n \u201cHe paved the way for a system that revolutionised local public transport in North East England.<\/p>\n \u201cTony and his team came up with the idea of taking decaying rail lines and linking them using city centre tunnels and a bridge over the River Tyne, which is the Metro system that we know so well today.<\/p>\n \u201cHis work as Director General cannot be understated. Tony famously quipped that we\u2019d \u2018never get away with building a Metro system,\u2019 but thanks to his skill and determination that is exactly what did happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Professor Ridley, a respected civil engineer, was Director General of the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive (PTE) from 1968 to 1975. He was part of the team of planners who devised the system and oversaw the planning process, the award of funding and the first year of construction.<\/p>\n After leaving the PTE he became the first managing director of the Hong Kong Metro system and later went on to manage London Underground. He was also President of the Institution of Civil Engineers and an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new plaque has been unveiled at Newcastle Central Metro station to commemorate Professor Tony Ridley, the man who helped to make the Tyne and Wear Metro system a reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[67],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64989,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64988\/revisions\/64989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}