The Tyne and Wear Metro, referred to locally as simply The Metro, is a rapid transit and light rail system in North East England, serving Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, South Tyneside, North Tyneside and Sunderland in the Tyne and Wear region. It has been described as the first modern light rail system in the United Kingdom.
The initial network opened between 1980 and 1984, using converted former railway lines, linked with new tunnel infrastructure. Extensions to the original network were opened in 1991 and 2002. In 2015/16 40 million passenger journeys were made on the network, which spans 77.5km and has two lines with a total of 60 stations, nine of which are underground. It is the second-largest of the four metro systems in the United Kingdom, after the London Underground; the others being the Docklands Light Railway and the Glasgow Subway.
The system is owned and operated by the local transport authority Nexus. Between 2010 and 2017 it was operated under contract by DB Regio Tyne & Wear Limited, a subsidiary of Arriva UK Trains. On 1 April 2017, this contract ended, and Nexus took over direct operation of the system for a planned period of two years.