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Tyne and Wear is the metropolitan area which includes all of Sunderland and Newcastle. However, Tyne and Wear is not an urban area as there are large green spaces between Newcastle and Sunderland. There is currently a large transportation system in Tyne and Wear, which includes a metro system, a bus network and an international airport. Nexus are the passenger transport executive responsible for transport in Tyne and Wear with its headquarters based in Newcastle, the primary transport hub of North East England.
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History
Newcastle arguably had the world's first local railway, the Newcastle & North Shields Railway (N&NSR), which opened in June 1839. The N&NSR opened between North Shields and Carliol Square in Newcastle. It was later extended to Tynemouth, which allowed through trains from the Blyth & Tyne Railway to run. The railway was also extended to Newcastle Central station, which opened in 1845. Most of the railway was closed in 1973.
Metro
The Tyne and Wear Metro - also known simply as the Metro - is a metro system which connects Newcastle to Sunderland as well as the other boroughs. It is one of only two cities in the UK outside London to have an urban rail metro system. The network opened in 1980, and in 2005-2006 provided 36.6 million public journeys on its route of nearly 78 kilometres (48 mi). A large part of the network uses the old main line on the Newcastle & North Shields Railway. The Metro system currently consists of two lines:
Mainline Services
Newcastle Central station is a key stop on the East Coast Main Line. Passenger services are operated by several companies:
Sunderland station which opened in 1879. The current regional operator Northern provides an off-peak service of one train per hour between Sunderland and Newcastle in both directions, with many trains also running to the MetroCentre shopping centre, Hexham, Carlisle and Middlesbrough.
The service to Newcastle Central Station is now considered an express service, calling only at Heworth, which is also served by the Metro, but the lines are segregated at this point. The former stopping service (which called at Seaburn, East Boldon and Brockley Whins) is now provided only by the Metro.
In January 2006 new operator Grand Central was granted permission to run four trains per day from Sunderland to London Kings Cross. Grand Central began running services on 18 December 2007.
Air Travel
Newcastle Airport is the tenth busiest airport in the United Kingdom. Destinations served include Galway, Paris, Dublin, Newquay, Plymouth, Toronto, London, Copenhagen, Brussels, Aberdeen, Birmingham, Cardiff, Isle of Man, Southampton, Stavanger, Alicante, Barcelona, Belfast, Bristol, Geneva, Faro, Ibiza, Kraków, Mahón, Málaga, Murcia, Nice, Palma de Mallorca, Prague, Rome-Ciampino, Dubai, Aberdeen, Exeter, Jersey, Limoges, Rennes, Arrecife, Corfu, Cork, Pisa, Rhodes, Tenerife, Düsseldorf, Hannover, Girona, Milan and many more places.
The airport is connected to Newcastle by a half-hourly bus service and by metro.
Bus
Tyne and Wear has an extensive bus network that is coordinated by Nexus. Bus services are operated by 3 main companies: Arriva North East, which serves to the north and east of Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland. Go North East serves mainly Gateshead and County Durham. Stagecoach North East provides most services within Newcastle, Sunderland and South Shields. QuayLink is a hybrid electric bus service operated between Newcastle Quayside and Gateshead Quays.
The main bus stations within Tyne and Wear are Eldon Square and Haymarket in Newcastle, Gateshead Interchange and Park Lane Interchange in Sunderland.
Coach
Long distance National Express services operate from Newcastle Coach Station and Sunderland's Park Lane Interchange to destinations such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Harrogate, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, Chester, Wrexham and Bangor.
The low-fare Megabus services run daily from Newcastle and Sunderland to Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry, Cwmbran, Leeds, London, Manchester, Sheffield and Wakefield. Additionally, coaches run from Newcastle to Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Inverness and Perth. The coaches stop outside Newcastle library, rather than the Coach Station.
Road
Major roads in the area include the A1 (Gateshead Newcastle Western Bypass), stretching north to Edinburgh and south to London; the A19 heading south past Sunderland and Middlesbrough to York and Doncaster; the A69 heading west to Carlisle; the A167, the old Great North Road, heading south to Gateshead, Chester-le-Street, Durham and Darlington; and the A1058 Coast Road, which runs from Jesmond to the east coast between Tynemouth and Cullercoats. Many of these designations are recent—upon completion of the Western Bypass, and its designation as the new line of the A1, the roads between this and the former line through the Tyne Tunnel were renumbered, with many city centre roads changing from a 6-prefix to their present 1-prefix numbers.
Water Travel
Newcastle has access to an international Ferry Terminal, at North Shields, which offers a ferry service to Amsterdam. Previous routes included Stavanger, Haugesund and Bergen. The Shields Ferry also operates between North Shields and South Shields, in North and South Tyneside respectively.