The Tyne and Wear Metro Team have taken home Best Customer Initiative award at the prestigious Global Light Rail Awards in London

The Metro team won the award for their impressive response to the pandemic, making sure that customers felt safe and reassured to travel with them throughout.

The award also celebrated their endeavours in welcoming customers back as covid restrictions began to lift such as their ‘Take the Kids for Free family promise’ initiative.

The team triumphed against tram and urban transit systems from all over the world to take the prize.

Nexus who are the public body that runs Metro also claimed second prize for the Best Technical Innovation in Rolling Stock. This award celebrated Nexus’s largest public consultation to date with a massive 23,000 customers taking part in the unprecedented VR-augmented and interactive online process allowing them to take some part in the process of designing a train. 

The innovative consultation was organised by train manufacturer Stadler and researchers from Newcastle University’s Open Lab digital civics department. The key focus was on the internal design and also for disabled users in a bid to shape major changes including more seating, changes to handholds, bike storage and wheelchair access for Nexus’s brand new trains which will come into service in 2023.

Nexus also celebrated three Gold awards and one Silver Award at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations North East Pride ceremony during the same week.

Nexus was also named winner for Regional Campaign of the Year, Best Use of Content and Best Use of Digital and Social Media and coming runner up in the Best Public Sector Campaign category.

Cllr Carl Johnson, Chair of the Tyne and Wear Sub Committee of the North East Joint Transport Committee, said: “Metro’s employees, like many other public transport staff and key workers, have shown amazing dedication through the last 18 months.

“It is a huge accolade for Metro’s frontline heroes, for Metro itself and our whole region to be recognised at the Global Light Rail Awards alongside cities from across the world.”

Chief Operating Officer at Nexus, Martin Kearney, said: “These two awards are nothing less than the team at Nexus and Metro deserve for the care and commitment they have shown to our customers.

“Customers have come back to Metro faster than on any other UK rail network because they feel happy and confident to travel with us.

“Local people are again making up to 100,000 journeys every day by our clean, green public transport and that is testament to the hard work and innovation of so many people at Nexus over the last year and a half.”

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