Five ideas never made it
BELIEVE it or not, every one of these five weird ideas were being considered for the North East.
For every ambitious plan which comes to life, another one is shelved away.
Here are five barmy transport ideas which were once on the cards but never saw the light of day.
Quayside cable cars: A cable car from Gateshead’s dilapidated high street to the Quayside sounds farfetched but once upon a time it was a serious idea.
Plans for an aerial route zooming people down to the Baltic were part of a wider package of plans to restore Gateshead town centre which were unveiled in 2007.
Some of them happened – such as demolishing the ‘Get Carter car park’ – but the more lavish proposals were put on ice following the financial crisis.
Sadly, the cable cars did not get off the ground.
Trams instead of metros: Back in 2002, plans were devised for a radical expansion of the Metro system which would have seen a shift towards trams.
With new stations expanding the network to new parts of the North East, the trams would have run on the same lines by 2008.
There were even plans to totally replace trains with trams eventually when the current fleet was scrapped.
After a few years of talks, the idea was dropped due to cost but there are still plans to expand the network.
Companies are vying for the contract to build a £362m fleet of trains to replace the current carriages by 2024 – but trams are no longer in the picture.
A Golden Gate Bridge over the Tyne: There are two bridges over the River Tyne you might have heard of – but this one would have rivaled them all.
Back in the late 1960s, Dennis Clark Slater, the man who designed Cramlington New Town, unveiled plans for a Golden Gate Bridge replica.
It would have spanned “the Narrows” between Low Lights, North Shields and Lawe Road, South Shields.
At 2,000ft, it would have been almost four times the length of the Tyne Bridge. England’s tallest bridge in Sunderland: After years of planning, Sunderland finally got a new bridge over the Wear last year – but it was not the one the city initially wanted.
The council had an ambition to have England’s tallest bridge built over the Wear but the financial crisis and cuts sunk the idea.
Plans for a 180m high, visually-striking bridge were designed by architect Stephen Spence and released to the public.
The Northern Spire Bridge – which is itself taller than Big Ben’s clock tower – is not too shabby either but it is not quite the momentous development the people of Wearside were initially promised.
Roads over the Tyne: Having extra bridges across the Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead is not the most farfetched idea – but the wider plan was.
Back in the 1960s, plans for a ‘City of Tyneside’ were discussed, uniting both sides of the Tyne via a huge development on a deck to be built over the water.
A new road road bridge would have helped people zoom around this newlycreated metropolis.
It did not really take off but incredible models displayed at the Baltic show what it might have been like.