UK: Buckingham Group Contracting has been awarded a £55m contract for the construction stage of the Metro Flow project to double the three remaining sections of single track on the Tyne & Wear Metro network.
The sections of the South Shields route between Pelaw and Hebburn (800 m), Hebburn and Jarrow (1 400 m) and Jarrow and Bede (600 m) are currently configured as two single tracks — one electrified for Metro services and the other used by freight trains. The freight track is to be upgraded and electrified to permit shared operation as a conventional double-track line.
Detailed design work will begin this year, with mobilisation expected early next year and the main construction to be undertaken from September to December 2022.
The project has secured £95m of funding from the government’s Transforming Cities Fund. Part of the money will be used to buy four more Stadler trainsets, in addition to the 42 already funded by the government under a £362m investment programme.
‘We’re looking forward to working with the Buckingham Group to deliver this exciting £100m scheme that will vastly improve Metro services for our customers’, said Martin Kearney, Chief Operating Officer at transport authority Nexus, on May 14.
Pointing out that the shared running would be ‘is similar to the operations we have on the Sunderland line’, he said removal of the single-track bottlenecks would allow the system-wide frequency of Metro services to be increased ‘from 12 min to 10 min outside of the central areas. For our passengers this means more regular services, and faster journey times.’
The changes are expected to increase system-wide capacity by 24 000 passengers/day, supporting a 20% increase in daytime services and providing greater resilience against disruption.
This is predicted to lead to an additional 10·9 million passenger-km of Metro travel and a reduction of 3 million car-km in 2022-23, an additional 1·7 million passenger-journeys by 2030, a reduction of 517 000 kg of CO2 and 38 000 kg of NO2 per year, journey time benefits of £177m, transport economic efficiency benefits of £182m and wider economic impacts of £90m.
‘This project also gives us the scope to examine future opportunities to expand the network to other areas that are currently not served by Metro’, Kearney added.
