Here’s a pair of interesting future planning maps for the Tyne & Wear Metro, a raid transit/light rail system in the northeast of England. The first, from September 2001, shows a plan to extend the network with street-running feeder trams, as shown by the light blue route lines. Note that the map indicates the extension to Sunderland as open, even though this wasn’t actually completed until 2002. According to the plan, this was a future vision for the network in 2016.

Fast forward to 2014 and the second map. Precisely two new stations – fill-ins at Northumberland Park and Simonside – have been constructed, and no extensions of any kind have been completed, although the southeast ends of the Yellow and Green lines have swapped positions. However, the map now shows new potential Metro corridors, this time envisioned to be complete by 2030. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of this plan, or if history will repeat itself. Metro certainly seems more concerned with the modernisation and refurbishment of its aging fleet and facilities than expansion at the moment.

As a side note, it’s fun to see the changes to the map in this time span. The Futura Condensed labels from 2001 look positively anaemic compared to the bold Calvert typeface from the 2014 map, while the angle of the main spine of the network from South Gosforth to Central Station goes from vertical to leaning left (the original map from the 1980s leaned to the right, so there’s been a very definite evolution to that part of the map).