Tyne and Wear Metro to be suspended from Saturday evening
All services will stop - but then resume on Sunday at 8am (20th February)
Metro services will be suspended throughout the system from early evening on Saturday, 19 February, and will restart from around 8am on Sunday, 20 February.
Customers are advised to seek alternative arrangements if they need to travel at these times, including making journeys later on Sunday morning.
Nexus, the public body which operates Metro, has apologised for the disruption and the inconvenience it will cause, which is the result of an industrial relations matter involving Metro’s Control Centre employees.
Metro services will start running off after 16:00 on Saturday although the majority of stations will see their last trains between 17:00 and 18:00 in the evening.
On Sunday morning the service will build up from 08:00 with a normal timetable from 09:00, including a replacement bus all day Saturday and Sunday between Chichester and South Shields for planned modernisation work.
For more details of last and first train times visit www.nexus.org.uk.
Metro tickets will be accepted on local buses across the area while the service is suspended. Customers should plan their journey in advance at www.nexus.org.uk/jplanner and select ‘bus’ in the travel mode option.
John Alexander, Metro Operations Director, said:
“We are forced to suspend the Metro service across the system on Saturday evening and early Sunday morning due to an industrial relations matter affecting our Control Centre. I am sorry for the inconvenience this will cause for many people.
“A small number of Metro employees in our control centre are refusing to work overtime or train colleagues to perform their roles.
"We have contingencies in place to protect our customers when this happens, but on this occasion we’ve exhausted all options, so we do not have staff available to operate Metro safely during one full shift from Saturday evening into Sunday morning.
“We are working hard with our trade unions in productive talks to resolve the outstanding issues there are within the control centre teams. This is an unprecedented situation and I very much hope it is not repeated. We are doing all we can to prevent that.”