THE creaking Tyne and Wear Metro will today be promised a £14.3m upgrade so passengers can finally buy tickets using notes, as well as coins.

The modernised machines will also accept credit cards and automatic gates will be set up at 13 of the busiest stations, to target fare-dodgers.

The long-awaited improvements to the network, which carries 133,000 people every weekday, will be announced by Transport Minister Rosie Winterton on a visit to Newcastle.

However, the cash injection is only a small slice of the £600m that public transport chiefs insist is desperately needed to modernise stations, renew tracks and buy new trains.

That project is threatened by the Government's much-criticised watering down of the North-East Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS), a key planning blueprint for the region.

The draft RSS included a commitment to "support" the modernisation, which the Government has changed to merely "investigate" the upgrade.

Today, Ms Winterton will announce that her department is contributing nearly £13m to the £14.3m improvement to ticketing facilities, although the scheme is not yet "fully approved".

She said: "This upgrade will bring the Metro's ticket facilities into the 21st Century."

The stations getting the automatic gates are Airport, Central, Gateshead, Heworth, Haymarket, Jesmond, Manors, Monument, North Shields, South Shields, South Gosforth, St James' and West Jesmond.

A list of priority transport schemes for the North-East has largely been accepted by ministers, but only £457m is available between now and 2016.

As well as the ticketing scheme, improvements to Sunderland platforms have also been added to the list of projects the department expects to fund.

Ms Winterton is visiting Newcastle as part of a consultation tour on the draft Local Transport Bill, which will give local councils powers to improve local transport, particularly bus services.