Nexus, which owns, manages and is modernising Metro, is starting work on new ticket machines and electronic ticket gates for its busiest Metro stop – Monument Metro station in Newcastle city centre.
Monument is one of the ten busiest railway stations in the English regions, with more than ten million passengers using it every year.
The work will start on Sunday January 13 and will take about three weeks to complete. In order to minimise disruption to passengers Monument station entrances will be closed from 8pm from Sundays to Wednesdays for the duration of the work.
Passengers will still be able to change trains and platform at Monument, but they won’t be able to enter or leave the station at these times, and should use alternative city centre stations instead.
Nexus, which owns, manages and is modernising Metro, is installing electronic ticket gates at 13 key stations. A total of 225 ticket machines are being fitted at all 60 Metro stations on the system.
Nexus has already upgraded 52 Metro stations with smart ticket machines which are capable of accepting credit and debit cards and banks notes, as well as coins.
Nexus aims to have the ticket gates ready for passenger use in 2013.
Director of Rail and Infrastructure for Nexus, Ken Mackay, said: “This is a significant moment in our £385m Metro all change modernisation programme, with our busiest station getting new ticket machines and gates.
“It is not possible to safely do this modernisation work, which involves digging up sections of floor, without closing the station for short periods.
“We did consider working only when the station is normally closed, between 1am and 5am, but this would have taken months and meant tens of thousands of passengers passing through a partial building site during the day.”
The new automatic ticket gates, similar to the London Underground, are being installed as part of the roll out of a new smartcard ticketing system on Metro – the Pop card.
The work is part of the Metro £385m Metro: all change modernisation programme, which will see the system transformed over the next 11 years, with new-look stations, trains and infrastructure.
The smart ticket machines are enabled to handle smartcard transactions for the new Pop cards. Passengers will be able to use the new ticket machines to top up their Pop cards.
Pop is the name of the new travel smartcard which is being rolled out across Tyne and Wear.
The smart ticket machines are set up to accept credit and debit card payments via payWave, the contactless method of card payment that involves simply touching the credit/debit card against a sensor. This is an added feature passengers can look forward to in the future.
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