| rdfs:comment | - The Tyne and Wear Metro, also known as the Metro, is a light rail system in North East England, serving Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, South Tyneside, North Tyneside and Sunderland. It opened in 1980 and in 2007–2008 provided 40 million public journeys on its network of nearly . It is operated by DB Regio (a subsidiary of German railway Deutsche Bahn) on behalf of Nexus and is one of only two underground metro systems in the UK outside London, along with the Glasgow Subway.
- The Metro is usually described as Britain's first modern light rail system. However, it can be considered a hybrid system, displaying elements of light rail, heavy underground metro, and longer-distance, higher speed suburban and interurban railway systems.
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| abstract | - The Tyne and Wear Metro, also known as the Metro, is a light rail system in North East England, serving Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, South Tyneside, North Tyneside and Sunderland. It opened in 1980 and in 2007–2008 provided 40 million public journeys on its network of nearly . It is operated by DB Regio (a subsidiary of German railway Deutsche Bahn) on behalf of Nexus and is one of only two underground metro systems in the UK outside London, along with the Glasgow Subway.
- The Metro is usually described as Britain's first modern light rail system. However, it can be considered a hybrid system, displaying elements of light rail, heavy underground metro, and longer-distance, higher speed suburban and interurban railway systems. The Metro began operating in 1980, but was an evolutionary development, as it was a pioneering system in the use of existing rights-of-way to create a modern rail transit system, linking them with purpose-built tunnels under central Newcastle and Gateshead. Much of the Metro's route was part of one of the world's first electric urban railway systems, which opened in 1904 on public passenger lines that were then already well established (see Tyneside Electrics). The Metro alignment comprises most of two of the world's oldest passenger railways, the Newcastle & North Shields Railway (Metro between Chillingham Road and North Shields) and the Brandling Junction Railway (between Gateshead and Monkwearmouth, near the Stadium of Light), both opened in 1839, making the Metro arguably one of the world's oldest local rail transport systems. In the case of Metro's Chichester station, the route of an existing mineral railway was chosen instead of the previous passenger railway alignment, as it passed through a more heavily populated area than the previous High Shields station, This is also the oldest section of the Metro route, dating back to 1834.
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