An automatic sliding step that will transform accessibility on the Tyne and Wear Metro’s new trains can be revealed for the first time this week. The sliding step is a key feature of the new £362m Metro fleet, making life easier for thousands of customers when boarding and alighting by eliminating the gap between the train and the platform edge.
They will be located at every door of the new trains, making boarding easier for Metro’s 50,000 wheelchair customers as well as people with children’s buggies, luggage or bicycles. The sliding step will automatically deploy from beneath the door sill every time the new Metro train pulls into a station, closing the gap between the platform. It then automatically retracts before the doors close and the train pulls away.
New photos released today show the new boarding system, passenger saloon and driver cab doors being put through their paces as final assembly of the new Metro trains continues.
Both the sliding step and the doors are being made by a company called Bode Die Tur, who specialise in the development and production of electronic door and boarding systems at their factory in the city of Kassel in Hessen, central Germany – which has recently been refitted following severe flash flooding in the region in 2019.