Take a look at the 24/7 operation that keeps the Tyne Tunnels moving

With around 65,000 journeys a day, the Tyne Tunnels play a vital role in the road infrastructure of the North East.

Due to their importance, the operating of the tunnels is a 24/7 task - with around 130 employees at TT2 all contributing to keeping the region moving.

This staffing number has seen an increase since TT2 moved to open road tolling in November 2021, with the organisation only having around 50 members of staff up until that point.

Shaun Simmons, the chief operating officer at TT2, has given an insight into how the organisation serves the North East in a number of different ways.

He said: “The main purpose of TT2 and the Tyne Tunnels is to provide infrastructure to the North East by making sure that people can have social mobility.

“Whether this is to access leisure time, their jobs or just to gain wider access to the whole region - that’s basically what we are here for.

“It takes a lot to provide this service, we have to be able to respond to any incidents to make sure that we provide a consistent and reliable service to the North East.

“Our vision and purpose is to make sure we are providing value to the people in region.

“Helping and contributing to people and organisations in the North East is something that we always want to be doing through our CSR programmes.”

It is these CSR programmes that have seen TT2 donate more than £300,000 to North East charities over the last three years.

As well as helping organisations in the region, TT2 looks to put its customers at the centre of experience it does.

Read more: I’ve worked at the Tyne Tunnels for 44 years and now they can’t get rid of me

Kirsty Farn, the product manager at TT2, has explained how the company uses customer feedback to continue to develop their offering to people across the North East.

She commented: “We have a lot of customer feedback channels through both our website and app.

“We manually look through the feedback that we receive, so this means that all comments from our customers are read by our team.

“One of the key focuses within the business is our customers so I would hope that since we’ve went live with Tyne Pass, they have seen that we are committed to them.

“We have listened to some of the requests that they have made and we’ve made changes on the back of their suggestions.

“Wherever we can, we will seek to make improvements but our customers are to key to everything that we do - they are at the heart of the business.”

Hanson Pottinger, asset manager at TT2, has revealed how much effort goes into the maintenance side of ensuring that the Tyne Tunnels are fit for purpose.

He added: “We have a team who are here on shift 24/7 which validate, check, and repair all of the systems within the tunnels

“It is vital that we have a preventative regime of making sure that everything is working as it should but also that we are able to respond to any unknown incidents, accidents, or failures that crop up.

“This is why a lot of our systems are in place twice so should one fail, there is a backup so there is always something in place to respond to a situation when required.

“It also means that we can do maintenance on one tunnel without interrupting the services of the other.

“This is why we do shifts, because a lot of the equipment is only accessible on a night-time when the roads are quiet and then during the daytime, we will look at a lot of the support buildings.

“It is just a continuous scheme throughout the years.”

You can find out more about TT2 by visiting: https://www.tt2.co.uk/.

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