STREET-RUNNING trams could reappear on North-East streets - more than five decades after they last saw service here.

Nine routes to be considered in detail will be put to members of the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority (PTA) next week.

The authority will consider proposals from Nexus, the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive (PTE), to take Project Orpheus - the centrepiece of Towards 2016, Nexus' 15-year plan for public transport in the region - to a detailed evaluation stage.

If PTA members ratify the proposal it will mark the beginning of a detailed programme of designing, evaluating and consulting on possible routes identified over the past nine months.

A total of 29 possible routes were identified as candidates for early appraisal, although some were quickly rejected as unsuitable.

Nexus said yesterday that additional potential routes will be considered if partner local authorities deliver the planning conditions for the success of those additional routes.

PTA members will be given a presentation on how the proposed transport corridors were selected before reaching their decision, at a meeting in Newcastle Civic Centre next week.

Tyne and Wear PTA chairman Danny Marshall said: "It is our ambition to put half of Tyne and Wear residents within a few hundred metres of a viable public transport link with the Metro."

Nexus director general Mike Parker said: "At present, the most deliverable routes are top of the agenda but there is scope for partnership approaches through planning and social inclusion to add worthy routes to the tram network."

It is anticipated the first trams could be running in 2008 - trams were phased out on Tyneside and Wearside in 1950.