Skip to main content

Tyne and Wear Metro opts for Kapsch digital radio network

Having expanded its activities to the public transport sector, Kapsch CarrierCom’s public transport business unit has been successful in winning a US$13 million contract to implement a digital radio network based on the TETRA standard for Nexus, the strategic public transport body in the UK’s north-east. Based in Newcastle, Nexus owns and manages the Tyne and Wear Metro, which is used annually by 37 million passengers. The new digital radio system will be installed on the Metro’s fleet of 90 trains, repl
June 23, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Having expanded its activities to the public transport sector, 81 Kapsch CarrierCom’s public transport business unit has been successful in winning a US$13 million contract to implement a digital radio network based on the TETRA standard for 2105 Nexus, the strategic public transport body in the UK’s north-east.

Based in Newcastle, Nexus owns and manages the Tyne and Wear Metro, which is used annually by 37 million passengers. The new digital radio system will be installed on the Metro’s fleet of 90 trains, replacing the existing analogue system, contributing to the service’s operation and establishing the basis for Nexus to develop and expand its service offerings.

Kapsch will build the entire TETRA infrastructure; deliver cab radios (the communications devices used in the vehicles) as well as all the terminals for the control centers. The new communications system will provide full coverage of the network in the entire Nexus area of operation and will also provide a significantly better performance than the existing analogue system.

The project forms part of the US$662 million Metro all change modernisation programme, an 11 year programme of modernisation work on the Tyne and Wear Metro, funded by the UK Government.

"The Nexus contract is the largest of its kind so far in the public transport business unit, a field that we have entered only recently. It demonstrates quite remarkably that our strategy of applying our experience in planning, building, and operating communications solutions to public transport operations was exactly the right step to take,” says Kari Kapsch, CEO of Kapsch CarrierCom.

Director of Rail and Infrastructure for Nexus, Raymond Johnstone, said: “The work to replace the radio system on the Tyne and Wear Metro is a highly significant part of our US$662 million modernisation programme. It is vital work that will harness the very latest digital technology to vastly improve Metro’s communication system. The current analogue system is reliable but we will get much better performance from more modern telecommunications technology.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • IBTTA 2011 Annual Meeting highlights developing trends in tolling
    January 26, 2012
    Alain Estiot, chief meeting organiser of this year's IBTTA Annual Meeting and Exhibition, talks about hot topics for discussion. The IBTTA's 79th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, which takes place this year in Berlin in September, will once again take many of the developing trends from around the world and look at their effects on the tolling sector. Host organisation Toll Collect's Alain Estiot, chief meeting organiser, says that the event has to be viewed against a backdrop of major global change.
  • Maryland to implement positive train control
    January 13, 2014
    In the wake of the December derailment of a New York passenger train that came off the tracks as it sped too fast into a turn, the Maryland Board of Public Works has approved a US$13 million contract to begin installing positive train control equipment, which uses GPS and radio signalling to react automatically if a collision or derailment is anticipated.
  • Integrating traffic management and tolling technologies
    April 25, 2013
    Jamie Surkont, head of road safety enforcement with Kapsch, outlines the company’s efforts to set up and align new traffic management business units with its more widely recognised tolling expertise The blurring of ITS applications’ edges brought about by systems’ increasing functionalities will ensure that many of the technologies which we have come to rely on for road and traffic management will find it increasingly difficult to exist or operate within tight market verticals. At the same time, systems man
  • Prime Minister’s ‘roads revolution’ good news for industry
    November 11, 2014
    Responding to the UK Prime Minister’s announcement which outlined a ‘roads revolution,’ the Freight Transport Association (FTA) has said that plans to deliver roads improvements across the country are good news for the freight and logistics industry. David Cameron stated that plans for the biggest road building programme for almost half a century will be unveiled in next month's Autumn Statement and would contain a US$24 billion overhaul of 100 of Britain's busiest roads and motorways by the end of the