It is not a sad situation , it is an impossible situation. Current estimates for this metro system are running at £220 million pounds which includes an input of £75 million poundsfrom Railtrack. Bearing in mind that these provisional estimates are usually made by someone who once estimated the number of rolls of wallpaper he needed to paper his lounge and therefore feels he is adequately qualified to estimate a huge civil engineering contract,the final fiqure will be somewhere in the region of twice that with 10% added for adding up mistakes.Half a billion pounds in the present financial climate for a new train set? I don't think so.
As an aside I cannot remember the last Japanese/US/European tourists who landed at Teesside Airport on spec looking for public transport to the bright lights of the Teesside Conurbation. I could be proven wrong but I think that 95% of the passengers leaving Teesside actually come back here and the others have secure arrangements with family/company or friends.Just because International is in the title,it dosen't really mean a grown up airport. It is a regional holiday slightly business airport with aspirations to be bigger than it can possibly be.BMI insisted that Durham be put in the title because they didn't understand the dynamics of the area any more than the current owner's appear to.Please let somebody local have an input into it before it is too late. With Jet2's announcements at NCL it may already be too late.