Gateshead Interchange could be demolished as MP backs plan for major overhaul of bus and Metro hub

Gateshead’s transport interchange “doesn’t work” and needs to be redeveloped, the town’s new MP says.

Gateshead Central and Whickham MP Mark Ferguson has backed major plans to demolish the town centre bus and Metro interchange, used by nine million people a year, and totally reconfigure the site.

A £34 million overhaul of the transport hub is named among the many ambitions that make up a new Local Transport Plan for the North East, with it earmarked as a project that could be completed in 2032.

Proposals backed by North East mayor Kim McGuinness and council leaders last week describe the vision to demolish and rebuild the 1980s interchange “on a smaller footprint, redesigned to address safety and security limitations, new retail, office and accommodation space, reconfiguration of the Metro station to make better use of the space and create better integration between public transport and the retail”.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, Mr Ferguson said: “I think it is a real opportunity to make better use of that space in the town centre.

"I have been speaking to Nexus, as well as working closely with Kim and the council, and I think everybody wants the same thing."

He added: “If, like me, you are in and out of the interchange every week then you know it doesn’t work.

"I think a smaller, better interchange is very much something we should all welcome.

“At the same time, this Local Transport Plan is going to take investment and will require those of us who are elected in the region to do the work to make sure the money is there so these things can be delivered.”

Included in the £8.7 billion plans to upgrade the North East’s transport system is the addition of a new railway station that would serve Gateshead town centre and the Quayside.

That is currently listed among potential projects to be completed by 2040.

The MP added: “It is something that is incredibly important because Gateshead is one of the biggest towns in the country not to have its own railway station.

"I am not going to stand here and make promises that cannot be kept about a timeframe, but I am going to make sure I am fighting for it because it is what the people of Gateshead deserve.”

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