Challenge: Reimagining Four Lane Ends Interchange

Transport hubs help us reach our destination, but are rarely the destination themselves. Yet they are often centrally located within communities and contain significant underused space.

This prompts the question - how could these spaces become places to spend time, meet people, access local businesses or engage in community activity?

The Context

Four Lane Ends Interchange is a multimodal transport hub in North Tyneside, including a Metro station, large bus station, retail space and a 475-space car park. It serves the surrounding communities of Benton, Longbenton and High Heaton, as well as nearby employment sites, the Freeman Hospital and passengers travelling from further afield.

Four Lane Ends is now significantly quieter than it was before the pandemic. Metro passenger entries and exits fell from 933,414 pre-pandemic to 692,126 in 2024/25, while the number of bus services and passengers has also declined. There is less need for some facilities that were previously busy, and a number of commercial units are currently unused. Parts of the car park and bus concourse also offer potential space for new uses.

Any new use would need to consider planning, health and safety, operational requirements and the needs of existing tenants. The aim is not to displace successful local businesses, but to build on what works and explore what could add something new.

The Challenge

Four Lane Ends presents an opportunity to explore what a more active and locally relevant transport hub could look like. How could underused spaces at Four Lane Ends create new opportunities for local businesses and communities, whilst supporting the use of public transport services?

This co-design workshop will bring together local businesses, communities and designers to work alongside senior commercial and operational staff from Nexus to explore new possibilities for Four Lane Ends. The interchange offers a diverse range of spaces to work with, from vacant commercial units and parts of the bus concourse to areas of the car park. How these spaces could be used is deliberately open: ideas might include markets, independent retail, food and drink, events, community activity, meeting or co-working spaces, meanwhile uses, or something completely different. The session is an opportunity to share different perspectives, understand what could be possible in practice and explore ideas that could potentially be taken forward with Nexus.

There is also an opportunity to think beyond Four Lane Ends. Could the ideas and principles developed here be applied to other transport hubs across the region? Ideas from the session could help inform future thinking about the interchange and may lead to opportunities for further involvement, although these cannot be guaranteed.

About our speakers

Roslyn Adamson MBA

Head of Commercial Income, Nexus

Roslyn is a commercial leader with extensive experience driving income generation, business development and customer-focused growth across the public and third sectors. As Head of Commercial Income at Nexus, she leads the development of commercial strategies that support the long-term sustainability of public transport services across the North East. Roslyn built her career in commercial roles within arts and culture, developing a strong track record of delivering revenue growth while balancing customer, community and organisational priorities. Her diverse sector experience gives her a unique perspective on the role of design in creating engaging experiences, strengthening commercial performance and delivering public value. She is particularly interested in how design thinking can help organisations tackle complex challenges and create services that are both commercially successful and customer-centred.

Kevin Leonard

Customer Service Operations Manager, Nexus

Kevin has a strong background in operations, having held numerous roles in both commercial and public sector organisations. As Customer Service Operations Manager at Nexus, Kevin is responsible for the safe operation of the Shields Ferry and bus interchanges on the Nexus network. Kevin joined Nexus in 2022 as Corporate Safety Officer, and has subsequently held roles as Competence Manager, playing an instrumental role in integrating the new Competency Management System into Nexus in 2023, before assuming his current role. Kevin has previous experience working in the maritime environment, key to his current role managing the Shields Ferry and bus interchanges.

About the venue

You can find further details about this venue here.