'Visionary' Sunderland mastermind behind the Tyne and Wear Metro scoops global award

The Judges’ Special Award at The Global Light Rail Awards was jointly presented to the Metro’s operator, Nexus, and to Professor Tony Ridley, the former director general who led the train project in its early years.

Prof Ridley, a respected civil engineer, headed up the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive from 1968 to 1975 and was part of a team of planners who devised the network.

The managing director of Transport North East, Tobyn Hughes, who is also the current director general of Nexus, said: “It was Tony Ridley and a group of visionary planners who first came up with the idea of taking decaying rail lines and linking them using city centre tunnels and a bridge over the River Tyne.

"What they created is what we know as the Tyne and Wear Metro 40 years on.

“Tony oversaw the development of the Metro plans, the successful bid for Government funding and he led some of the initial construction work.

“It is Tony Ridley who we have to thank for the first idea of a Metro network.

"My thanks go to everyone who works on the system now, and who has worked on it over the last 40 years.”

Prof Ridley, now in his 80s, left the Tyne and Wear PTE in 1975 to become the first managing director of the Hong Kong Metro system.

He later went on to manage the London Underground and the development of the Docklands Light Railway.

He also became director of the University of London Centre for Transport Studies and is emeritus professor of Transport Engineering at Imperial College London.

The first Metro passenger services ran in August 1980 between Haymarket and Tynemouth although the official opening by the Queen took place on November 6, 1981.

The system reached Gateshead in 1981, going as far as Heworth before the North Tyne loop was completed in 1982.

It was extended to South Shields in 1984 and to Newcastle Airport in 1991.

The Sunderland line was opened in April 2002 at a cost of £100m after a three-year construction project.

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