Newcastle upon Tyne 🇬🇧

Yes on the buses and the Shields Ferry, no on the Metro and no on the trains — which is the wrong way round from what most visitors expect.

On Go North East, Stagecoach North East and Arriva buses your own card or phone works — though not an American Express card on Go North East or Arriva — but the three companies do three different things with the tap. Go North East takes it when the driver prompts you, and the tap buys the ticket you asked for, with no tap off — except on four routes, the Voltra 53 and 54 and the QuayCity Q3 and Q3X, which are genuine tap on, tap off, and where forgetting the second tap charges you a £2.50 single. Stagecoach North East is one tap and no tap off at all. Arriva runs two things through the same reader: a plain single tap that buys you a ticket outright, and a separate Tap On Tap Off product on the routes and zones it publishes for it, where a missed tap off charges you the single fare from where you boarded all the way to the end of that route. The Shields Ferry takes a card on board as well, at a flat fare for the crossing.

The Metro is where a bank card stops being a ticket. Nexus does not accept one at a gate or a platform reader, and neither does Northern on the Northumberland Line. What a card is good for there is the machine: the Metro station ticket machines take a contactless tap and sell a paper ticket. It is also where you top up a Pop card, Nexus's own pay-as-you-go smartcard — but the card itself is ordered online, not bought at the machine.

On those same four routes, tap on and tap off the Voltra 53 and 54 or the QuayCity Q3 and Q3X and Go North East holds your card to £4.80 in a day and £16.50 in a week. For the Metro, tap that same bank card at the station machine and buy a paper ticket before each journey.

No — not as a ticket. A bank card or a phone will not open a Metro gate or satisfy the yellow reader on the platform, and Nexus does not accept one as a Metro fare at all.

It does pay at the machine. Every Metro station ticket machine takes a contactless card or phone and sells a paper ticket for the journey you are making. It is also where you top up a Pop card — Nexus's own pay-as-you-go smartcard, and the thing the Metro actually runs on — though the card itself is ordered online, not bought at the machine. With a Pop card you touch in on the yellow platform reader or the orange reader on the gate at the start of the journey and touch out at the end, and you are charged for the zones you crossed.

The touch out is what protects your money. Touch in and not out and the journey is incomplete and charged at the maximum all-zone fare, which counts towards nothing — while a day of complete journeys caps at £3.30 inside one zone, £4.50 across two and £5.00 across three or four. Not touching in at all is the serious one: it counts as travelling without a valid ticket, and a Penalty Fare Notice is £100 plus the price of the full single fare, or £50 plus that fare if you pay within 21 days.

So use the bank card for what it is good for here: buy a paper ticket with it at the machine before each journey, or, if you already hold a Pop card, top it up there and touch it at both ends of every trip.

Yes, on Go North East, Stagecoach North East and Arriva buses, though Go North East and Arriva refuse American Express. The tap means three different things with the three companies, so watch what the reader and the driver tell you.

Go North East takes your card when the driver prompts you, and the tap buys the ticket you asked for. There is no tap off. Four of its routes are the exception and are true tap on, tap off — the Voltra 53 and 54 and the QuayCity Q3 and Q3X — where forgetting the second tap charges you a £2.50 single that you then have to dispute through customer services or your online journey and fare history. Stagecoach North East is one tap and nothing else: the tap buys a ticket, there is no tap off, and an adult single across most of the North East Combined Authority area is held at £2.50 — though not on the routes Stagecoach lists as excluded from that ceiling, so ask the driver the fare if you are unsure. Arriva runs two things through the same reader: a plain single tap that buys you a ticket outright, and a separate Tap On Tap Off product on the routes and zones it publishes for it, and that second one is the expensive one to forget — a missed tap off charges you the single fare from where you boarded to the end of that route.

On those four routes, Go North East's Tap On, Tap Off holds your card to £4.80 in a day and £16.50 in a week.

Travelling without a valid ticket costs £60 on Go North East, halved to £30 if you pay the supervisor on the spot or by card over the phone within seven days, and up to £60 on Stagecoach North East. Arriva has a penalty fare and puts no figure of its own on it, so treat a notice from an Arriva inspector as one to read carefully rather than one you can price in advance.

So tap as you board, and know before you sit down whether that route wants a second tap: never on Stagecoach North East, on Go North East only on the Voltra 53 and 54 and the QuayCity Q3 and Q3X, and on Arriva only where its Tap On Tap Off list covers the route. If you are unsure, ask the driver as you tap on.

Pop is Nexus's own smartcard, and on the Metro it is close to essential: the Metro accepts no contactless bank card, so get a Pop card or buy a paper ticket from the machine before you ride.

The card itself is free, but you cannot get one empty. An adult Pop pay-as-you-go card has to be ordered with at least £5.00 of credit on it, and the balance tops out at £90. Order it from the Nexus website and top up online, then load the top-up onto the card at any Metro station gate, platform reader or ticket machine; or skip the website and top up at a Metro machine directly, which takes coins. On an Android phone the pay-as-you-go card can be carried in Google Wallet instead of your pocket.

Where it caps is the part to get right. On the Metro, and on the Northumberland Line's Zone D, a Pop day is capped — £3.30 within one zone, up to £5.00 across three or four — but only if you touch in and touch out on every journey. On buses and on the Shields Ferry it is a wallet and not a cap: Nexus states outright that there is no daily cap on bus journeys and none on the ferry, however many you make. Buses and the ferry will also let your balance run negative, down to minus £3.50, while the Metro will not let you start a journey in the red.

There are age versions of it too: Pop Blue for 16- to 21-year-olds, capping flat at £2.20 a day, and Junior Blue for 15 and under. Nexus does not say whether a visitor without a UK address can order the adult card online, or whether it will post one abroad, so do not plan your trip around having one: a paper ticket from any Metro station machine, paid by card or cash, will do instead. If you do get a Pop card, touch out at every gate.

Yes, two of them, and neither covers the buses generally.

The main one runs on a Pop card, Nexus's own smartcard, and it covers the Metro plus the Northumberland Line's Zone D, where Nexus and Northern cross-accept each other's tickets. An adult Pop pay-as-you-go day caps at £3.30 within one zone, £4.50 across two and £5.00 across three or four — and £5.00 is the most a day can cost you anywhere on that network. It only works if you touch in and touch out on every single journey: an incomplete journey is charged the maximum fare instead of counting towards the cap, and can bring a penalty notice with it. Riders aged 16 to 21 holding a Pop Blue card cap flat at £2.20 a day whatever the zones.

The second is Go North East's own Tap On, Tap Off, which works on your own contactless bank card but only on four routes — the Voltra 53 and 54 and the QuayCity Q3 and Q3X. On those it caps at £4.80 a day and £16.50 a week.

Everywhere else, nothing accrues. Nexus says it plainly for both adult Pop and Pop Blue: there is no daily cap on bus journeys and none on the Shields Ferry, however many you make. What a bus has instead is a ceiling on each single fare — £2.50 for an adult, £1.00 if you are 21 or under — so a day of buses is a matter of counting singles. If you expect to ride the Metro more than twice in a day, get a Pop card first and touch out every time.

Visa, Mastercard and Maestro are the card schemes named as working here, along with Apple Pay and Google Pay. That list is not offered as a complete one, so a scheme missing from it — American Express, for instance — is not being refused; it is simply unsettled. Whether a card issued abroad is treated any differently is not settled here either way. What is certain is that a card your own bank blocks abroad fails for that reason rather than for anything an operator in Newcastle decided.

The more useful question is where a bank card is a ticket at all, because on the Metro it is not. The Tyne and Wear Metro takes no contactless bank card as a fare, whoever issued it, and neither do Northern's Northumberland Line trains. The card in your pocket still buys the journey — it just buys it at a Metro station ticket machine, which does take contactless, and what comes out is a paper ticket or a topped-up Pop card, Nexus's own travel smartcard.

On the buses the tap is the fare. Arriva, Go North East and Stagecoach North East all take a contactless card or phone on board, and so does the Shields Ferry, where card is the only thing the crew take at all. So carry a Visa or a Mastercard, use it straight onto a bus reader, and at the Metro go to the machine on the platform before you go through the gate.

On the Metro, missing a touch is not automatically a fine. If you touch in and not out, or out and not in, Nexus treats the journey as incomplete and charges you the maximum all-zone fare for it. Failing to touch in at all is the serious one: that counts as travelling with no valid ticket, and on Nexus it can bring a Penalty Fare Notice of £100 plus the price of the full single fare for the journey you meant to make, reduced to £50 plus that same fare if you pay within 21 days, or prosecution. Northern's Northumberland Line works the same way on a Pop card — a missed touch is charged at the maximum single fare for the zones you touched, and can carry the same £100-plus-the-fare notice on top of it.

The buses belong to the companies, not to Nexus, and they are cheaper to get wrong. Go North East issues a penalty fare of £60, halved to £30 if you pay the supervisor who hands it to you there and then, or pay by card over the phone within 7 days. Stagecoach North East writes its as a ceiling rather than a flat charge — a penalty fare of up to £60 — so read the figure on the notice you are actually given rather than assuming the worst or the best. Arriva records a penalty fare but publishes no figure — what it does publish is that its readers expect a tap off, and that forgetting one charges you the single fare all the way to the end of the route you were on.

Go North East's tap-on, tap-off routes are the exception that is worth knowing: on the Voltra 53 and 54 and the QuayCity Q3 and Q3X, forgetting to tap off is not a penalty at all. You are charged a £2.50 single, and you can dispute the overcharge through customer services or your online journey and fare history. The Shields Ferry records no penalty regime; what it has is a boarding rule, so a mobile ticket you cannot show to the crew means you do not travel on it.

So the habit that protects you costs nothing: touch the reader at both ends of every Metro and Northumberland Line journey. That single action is the difference between the fare you earned and the highest fare there is.

Newcastle International has one terminal and its own Metro station at it, and for most arrivals that is the whole answer. The Tyne and Wear Metro runs from Airport station into the city centre in about 25 minutes. Pay with a Pop card or buy a paper ticket from the machine, which takes a contactless bank card, Apple Pay or Google Pay; what you cannot do is tap that card at the gate to ride. An adult Pop pay-as-you-go single is capped at £2.50 however far you ride and an adult Pop day at £5.00, while the paper ticket from the machine is not capped and costs more.

Buses stop there too. Go North East's 787 uses the stop opposite the terminal and runs through the city centre; Stagecoach's X77, X78 and X79 stop out on the B6918, a walk rather than a door. Both run Monday to Saturday only and are priced as ordinary North East bus services, with no airport premium and a single capped at £2.50.

For a car, Arrow Cars is the airport's own on-site operator: booking office in the arrivals hall staffed around the clock, self-service kiosks at the pick-up point, and its cars immediately outside arrivals. Its fares are fixed, all-inclusive and paid in advance rather than run on a meter, so the price you are quoted is the price you pay. Uber works here as well, though its own Taxi product is not offered at this airport — only the standard rideshare classes. Bolt operates here too: request the ride in the app to see where it will collect you, and follow the ride-hailing pick-up signs at the airport.

So do one thing before you leave the terminal: buy a paper ticket at the Airport station machine, or top up your Pop card there if you already hold one, then go down to the platform.

Some of them do, and it depends on the age and on the mode. A child under 5 travels free on all public transport in Tyne and Wear when they are with a fare-paying adult. There is no card and no ticket for this, and no proof of age is asked for beyond the child appearing to be under 5.

Above that there is Kids Go Free, which carries up to three children aged 11 and under alongside one fare-paying adult. On the Metro and the Shields Ferry it runs all day, every day. On the buses it runs during school holidays only, across Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Northumberland. Again there is nothing to buy and nothing to show beyond the children being visibly 11 or under and the adult paying a fare.

Everyone else pays, but not the adult price. A child of 15 or under pays a child fare on the Metro: £1.00 a single, £2.20 for an all-day ticket. A cheaper rate than that exists, and it is issued only to children who live in Tyne and Wear, so a visiting child pays the £1.00.

On the buses the band is wider than childhood. Anyone aged 21 or under pays a flat £1.00 bus single under the region-wide Mayor's Fares policy, and a £3.00 21 and Under Day Ticket covers bus, Metro, the ferry and local rail together. That fare applies whatever you pay with, so there is nothing to buy in advance. Just keep the fare-paying adult with the children — every free ride here rests on one being there — and say the child's age when you board.

Yes on the buses and at the Metro machines, and no on the ferry. Bus drivers on Go North East, Arriva and Stagecoach North East take coins, and so do the Metro station ticket machines. On Northern's Northumberland Line, press Promise to Pay on the station ticket machine, take the ticket it prints, and pay the conductor on the train in cash. The Shields Ferry is the exception, and it is an easy one to get wrong: Nexus's own ferry ticket pages say the crossing is paid for by card, and it is the bus drivers, not the ferry crew, who take coins and notes.

Cash buys a ticket rather than opening a gate. Tell the driver where you are going and pay as you board, or buy at a Metro machine before you go down to the platform, and then travel on what you were given.

Carry coins and small notes, and have the fare ready. Go North East runs an exact-fare system and can refuse to take or change large notes. Stagecoach North East drivers give change in most cases, but not every time.

The useful thing about the Metro machines is that they top up Pop cards as well as selling paper tickets, and they take coins for both. So if you already hold a Pop card, top it up with coins at the machine and you are done counting them for the rest of the trip; if you do not, buy a paper ticket there before each journey.

Yes. Coins pay the driver on Go North East, Arriva and Stagecoach North East, and the driver issues a paper ticket for the journey — say where you are going and the fare is set from that.

Notes are recorded as taken on some services rather than all, so they are not something to board on. Change is thinner still: Stagecoach North East gives it on some of its services and not on others, and no change policy is recorded for Go North East or Arriva. Coins, close to the fare, is the way to get on without a conversation.

You can work out what to count before you get to the stop. An adult single bus fare across this region is held to a maximum of £2.50 however you pay for it, and £1.00 for anyone aged 21 or under, so the coins in your hand only ever need to add up to that.

Yes, and which app depends on who is carrying you. Go North East's app sells M Tickets, including the Network One products that are valid across several operators here; those same Network One tickets can instead be bought online and loaded onto a Pop card if you would rather not use an app at all. Stagecoach North East sells through the national Stagecoach Bus app, and Arriva sells m-tickets in the Arriva Bus App, valid on its services here. Both are tickets you show rather than tap: a Stagecoach driver will tell you whether to show or scan one, and an Arriva driver or inspector will want to see it on your screen.

The Metro behaves differently from the buses. A mobile ticket there is not simply shown to anyone — you touch it in at the gate or the platform reader exactly as you would a Pop card, and a Metro mobile ticket that has not been touched in counts as no ticket at all, with a Penalty Fare Notice or prosecution behind it. On the Shields Ferry it is the reverse: the crew look at the ticket, and if you cannot show it to them you are not permitted to travel on it. Northern's Northumberland Line takes an e-ticket shown to staff, and no touch-in step at all.

The trap on the buses is activation. A Stagecoach mobile ticket has to be activated over Wi-Fi or mobile data before you board, and it then runs on a countdown; a flat battery or no signal at the stop leaves you with nothing to show the driver. Activate it while you still have a connection, not as the bus is pulling in.

Fares yes; journey times only for airports. Fares, caps and penalties are printed where an operator publishes them, with the source beside each figure. Journey times appear only on the airport pages, as the rough time from the airport to the centre where one is published; there are no timetables here. For a live departure or a door-to-door route, use the operator's own journey planner.