Ponteland

One big oddity when looking at the existing metro is the airport line.
It stretches far to the north west of the city well out of any populated areas just to get to the airport.

This is somewhat overkill for a airport as small as Newcastle's but fair enough, I have found use for a dedicated and sanely priced airport-city link in the past. As I've mentioned in prior posts this is much better than the situation in many towns where the airport has a monopoly and charges you £10 for a 10km shuttle bus.

But, the airport line could have been so much more. Just to the west of the airport, a little more than a mile away, lies the large village (10,000 people) of Ponteland. Why is this not connected to the metro?

The airport line was not built totally from scratch, like much of the metro it was built over what used to be a railway connecting Ponteland and Newcastle. To look at satellite photos you can still clearly see where this line used to be extending north west of the airport to Ponteland.

So why then does the line definitively end at the airport and not follow to its natural conclusion?
Politics.
Ponteland lies outside of Tyne and Wear and in the county of Northumberland. Due to the way the country is organised Ponteland is denied a valuable service linking it to the nearby city where most of its population work.

If we're to be suggesting ways to improve the metro though then a extension to Ponteland really needs to be done.
Unfortunatly due to the way the airport station is built continuing directly on from there would be a needlessly difficult process with the airport car park blocking the way. Whether this would be crossed or a new station built though is neither here nor there. The end result should be the same; the addition of Ponteland to the end of the green line.