The Yellow Line

Continuing my getting back on track (ho ho unintentional pun) here my yellow line in google earth format with a quick writeup.

The Current Yellow Line: http://www.multiupload.com/KL9YGHMVCH
The New Yellow Line: http://www.multiupload.com/UQP63Q2M4A




My proposed yellow line extension in many ways seems to be the shortest and easiest, it requiring the smallest extra lines to be drawn on a map. In reality however it would be the most difficult, almost entirely involving tunnelling through quite hilly and built up terrain.
I have tried to minimise this as much as possible in my design, cut and cover up the West Road, though highly disruptive in the short term, would reduce costs and difficulty in constructing the line. Nonetheless this task is not one to be taken lightly, if done however it would truly contribute into turning the Tyne and Wear metro into more of a proper metro, serving the entirety of Newcastle.
The new yellow line would largely be the same as the old yellow line, that is, until St.James…

Science Park- The first new station I would place at the far corner of the new Science Park development from St.James. Sadly, I believe time might be running out for this plan, the science park development is nearly complete and this easy extension wasn’t done. I have heard mutterings however that the science park was built in such a way that a metro extension beneath it could be done without much difficulty in the future.

General Hospital- The next station, and quite a must do for any extension to the west end, is at the General Hospital.
Though where to build the rails in extensions up this way seems quite logical to me- under the road, station placement is quite hard, there will need to be rather a lot of taking over land and perhaps some knocking down buildings to get something built- even if we keep the surface impact of the station to a minimum. For this station at least however we do seem to have a convenient lawn that can be built over.

Benwell- Or should this station be called Westgate? The question of what to name stations on this extension is rather difficult due to the West Road often forming a border and names tending to be confused anyway.
I would place this station right by the Westgate Sports Centre

Slatyford- Yet another mysterious and probably bad station name. I’ve never lived in the west end so sorry for not being entirely sure what’s what up there.
The Slatyford station would be further up the west road, right about at the entrance to the crematorium.

Denton- After Slatyford the line follows the West Road a bit more before veering off southwards after the round about. The difficult part is over now with the ground the line is being built under/perhaps on being fields. The line goes south westerly through the parkland then after crossing another road we have the next station. Perhaps it should better be called Denton Burn…?

Scotswood- The line continues onwards, through the allotments, the edge of the woods and yet more parkland, cutting to the left of Scotswood sports/social centre, generally curving with the road. The new station will be on the opposite side of Denton Road to the new Scotswood housing development (assuming it ever gets done…I have hope it will…eventually).

Lemington- After Scotswood the line then turns sharply and heads west and slightly north. The next station will be at Lemington.
This might well be the last station on the westward expansion. The placement of the station highly depends on whether it is or not.
I am assuming here that it is the second to last station and place it fairly centrally amidst the buildings to the east and west of the forest, this place is not somewhere I’m committed to as a good idea however, a bit further west to be near the community centre and all those businesses on the south side of the town might be better.

Knop Law- The end of the line is a bit of a strange one and highly depends on further construction. The line continues after Lemington, largely following the route of the old North Walbottle Waggonway, it terminating only after it has crossed Hospital Lane.
This may seem a strange place for a station, being largely surrounded by fields, however, I would propose a new major housing development in this area to provide affordable housing with good links to the city centre. Only if this is done would this final station be worthwhile, if not, then we better end at Lemmington with a central community centre based station.

Updated route- Station map

And here are some minor changes to the more traditional metro map.
The major ones from the earlier version are:
[*] A kink in the track in the west end to get to the west edge of Scotswood (where redevelopment is taking place) rather than going straight to Lemington
[*] The blue line follows the yellow line to Byker rather than creating a new station along the mainline just a few metres north of it.

Updated route- Geographic map

Excuse the uglyness of the map with all the random squares taken out of it but it was just too huge to post complete. I've even had to shrink it down quite a lot to get anything working!
Here is my proposed route on a geographic map. The stations are of course shown by the big over-sized yellow and black squares whilst the tracks are their route colours (with different shades for above/below ground).
Its somewhat rough but hopefully it'll give you a idea of the way things should be.
As I said back when I first started this the routes range from hard (the west end) to we should bloody well do this tomorrow (the blue line).

Commuter Rail

As I've mentioned in prior posts there is a lot of talk these days about giving Blyth and Ashington rail links to Newcastle. Many (primarily from Blyth and Ashington) would like this to be a metro link however the distance involved is just too great for this to be viable. On the other hand, the distance is too short and the route too well used for just a regular train service.

So, here we have it, North East Commuter Rail.
Not actually a metro system however branded like one and with services more regular than a standard train (though nowhere near metro frequencies).

The map as presented here is very much one of 'maximum extent'. Not even ideal world but a map of where the lines should go.
Ideal worldly I would not service so many metro stations, they get good enough service already from the metro afterall and its unlikely many people travelling from Ashington will want to go to Newcastle residential areas. Only one or two of these outer stations should be serviced with the priority instead being to get to the city centre as fast as possible.

In addition to the Ashington-Newcastle link it also seemed to make sense to me to have better service linking Chester-Le-Street to Newcastle...and if you're going that far why not Durham? And from there it balooned into a north east wide network, linking up the Tees Valley metro and the Tyne-Wear metro.

Generally this map follows existing lines- sorry Blyth, but your town is just too far away from them and I had to serve the rim- however one small exception was made south of Durham for the large and unfairly isolated town of Spennymoor.

As I've said this is largely ideal worldly however the government does seriously want to build stations in Blyth and Ashington (and Washington but...that conflicts with my prior ideas and I've already established I don't like it!) and this seems the best way to do so.

A semi-metro...the bastard child of metro and rail.

The new metro

So here we have it...how the metro should look.

The only bit I'm really unsure about is the blue line's northbound route, it goes quite a way north of the city to a not particularly important area, its the best that I think of doing with the Metro Centre route though- otherwise it'd just be doubling up sections of other routes and I figured linking new places in would be better.

Newcastle West End- Here comes the hard bit

The west end of Newcastle is probably the area most in need of metro access; very densely inhabited and the people there have the metro right under their noses given good transport service to their neighbours in the centre, east and north of the city. The west enders are only ones in the town left to their own devices. And giving the hilly nature of much of the west end of town this isn't particularly nice.

Many of the same reasons which make the west end of Newcastle a desirable place for the metro however are also big factors in making any such extension very difficult (and costly) and therefore not done.

There's little way around it really. A decent west end extension will be costly and can't be so easily done with above ground track as with the other extensions I have mooted.

A few ideas for what route this extension could follow:

1: From central station head down to the Arena then out to Scotswood, crossing a bridge and then looping back to the Metro Centre.
This route is one which really should have been implemented early in the history of the metro system. There was once a railway line which ran along this route with the Scotswood Railway Bridge still being a visible reminder of its existence.
Today however...This route really isn't the best.

Railway lines do still exist coming out from central station and extending all the way to Water Street in Rye Hill. An Arena station fitted onto this would be a very good thing to have today, the Arena being a popular entertainment venue and several other businesses existing in that end of town. There is also talk of redeveloping the area massively to place more businesses (a casino is the main one I remember) around a possibly rebuilt Arena.

The trouble is...There's nowhere really worth stopping after here.
Relaying the track west of where it terminates today wouldn't be too difficult, the old location of the line is still visible along much of its former route. Newcastle Buisness Park is next which could also be a nice place for a station but this river hugging area is generally very sparse, passing well south of the dense residential areas such as Benwell.
Scotswood, our 'destination' on this leg of the line is not a big place. It used to be bigger, looking at photos from just the 2000s reveals a lot of terraced housing which has since been demolished.
Perhaps redevelopment(i.e. resurrection) of this area in co-ordination with a metro extension could be done but as things stand its not great.

If we were to decide not to cross the Scotswood Railway Bridge (a wise choice as this would make us miss Blaydon station and central Blaydon as a whole) then we could get some good use from this line by going further to Lemington and Southern Denton or perhaps with a large west and north loop Walbottle and West Denton.

This route though really not the best is not completely without merit especially if followed as part of a dedicated western riverside redevelopment but still. Its not the best.

2: Branching of the aiport line at some point to take in the western end of the west end. This could be done either through following the A1 southwards after Fawdon and heading deep into the west end or by skimming the western edge of Newcastle after Bank Foot.
This method though possible overland probably wouldn't give the best service however. To get to the city centre (very likely the most popular destination) the metro would have to follow this northwards skimming route whereas buses could just head there directly. The metro could well end up actually being slower than a bus if the traffic is right. It certainly would never be enough of an improvement to be worthwhile.

3: The most sensible tunneling extension which really should be done even if the others are not is a new station on the west end of the new science park development (old location of the brewery).
From here I would then recommend following the West Road up deep into the west end linking up the General Hospital area and Benwell. Then we've a bit of a option, turning north and linking more of Fenham, Cowgate and Kenton or (my favoured choice) continuing ever westwards to Denton.
Again there's another choice: the more aesthetically pleasing on a map heading south to make a metro centre loop or just having the yellow line stop further west than it currently does.

The big trouble here which I'm sure you've realised is there is very little open space in this direction. We need underground track.
Now, this could be done through typical tunneling but this is very difficult and takes a very long time.
I would more recommend cut and cover.
The West Road should be wide enough for this- perhaps if we're very lucky we could even just dig sections and then drop the tunnel in.
The West Road of course will experience a lot of upheaval whilst this building is going on. Even with the most ideal method of dropping tunnels in its very unlikely we could do the work entirely over night and open the road the next morning- or rather its quite unlikely we could do that and very very unlikely the health and safety people would allow it.

Nonetheless I think this is a sacrifice worth making. People can find other routes to work and the long term benefits to the west end will be enormous.

4: Taking aspects of 2 and 3 we could take the option of heading north into Fenham then towards the A1 following track and linking after Fawdon.
This route would be a lot more useful than a flat 2 and give access to areas 3 doesn't. Additionally loops do look great on a map.
The problems I see here are two-fold.
Firstly, much of the route would be a duplication of the already existing green line. A three fold duplication with the yellow line added in on the Gosforth-Monument leg.
Secondly, it would involve just as much difficult tunneling as sticking entirely to the west road and would involve tunneling under narrower and curvier roads.
This could perhaps be an advantage; the smaller roads mean less traffic disruption. But it could also give us less of a 'production line' in tunnel construction.