Community of Metros News – Community of Metros Benchmarking Group

Community of Metros News: 2025 Virtual Events

October 13, 2025October 10, 2025

The TSC continues to host virtual events throughout the year ensuring timely sharing of research findings with COMET members. The virtual events are regularly held following the annual work programme.

Virtual General Meetings (VGMs)

Two VGMs were held in 2025, one in February and another in July, each comprising general and business sessions. The February VGM featured updates on supply and demand, with members sharing insights on major projects or strategic priorities for the year. The July VGM provided an overview of COMET activities, membership developments, and future expert workshops.

Case Study Webinars

These webinars showcase key findings from ongoing studies. This year, the TSC has hosted the study webinars on Real-Time Monitoring of Track Equipment (February), Reducing Impact of Major Projects (April), Air Quality (May), Reducing Passenger Safety Incidents (July), Intelligent Video Analytics for Safety Management (July), and Decarbonisation (August).

Example slide from Reducing Impact of Major Projects Webinar

Data-Oriented Webinars

Three data-related webinars were held this year, covering the Virtual Data Clinic (March), Customer Satisfaction Survey Results (September), and Data Insights Webinar (September).

Community of Metros News: COMET 2025 Eastern Meeting in Hong Kong, 1-4 June

October 11, 2025June 12, 2025

The TSC is excited to share the successful meeting hosted by Hong Kong MTR last week. We had attendance from 12 eastern metros, including new member Chengdu Rail Transit who introduced their excellent system to the COMET members.

The meeting covered topics of improving safety, automated operations, fleet introduction, financial sustainability, and environmental development. There were also several fantastic technical visits, covering control rooms, stations, customer service and crowding initiatives, MTR’s Data Studio, smart maintenance, and TOD.

The delegates visited the MTR “Station Rail Voyage” exhibition, held in celebration of the Hong Kong MTR’s 45^th anniversary. The exhibition showcases a diverse collection of historical artifact including retired trains and vintage staff uniform accessories.

Community of Metros News: COMET 2025 Western Meeting in Montréal, 13-16 May

October 13, 2025May 26, 2025

Earlier this month, metro operators from across Europe, Latin America, and North America came together in Montréal for the COMET 2025 Western Meeting. There were 27 attendees from 16 organisations gathered to exchange knowledge and good practices.

During the meeting, participants shared insights and explored key challenges and innovations shaping the future of urban transit, including fiscal resilience, safety and security strategies, service performance drivers, renewal projects, and the evolving impact of automation.

A highlight of the meeting was the behind-the-scenes tour of the Montréal STM network, offering a close-up look at station operations and maintenance facilities.

Community of Metros News: Export Workshop on Metro Automation in Madrid, 24-27 March

October 13, 2025March 31, 2025

The TSC extends its sincere appreciation to Metro de Madrid for hosting an outstanding expert workshop last week. For three days, 21 COMET members and 3 ISBeRG members gathered to discuss conversion to metro automation, with topics ranging from platform doors to systems integration and interface management.

Metro de Madrid also arranged technical visits to their OCC, the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and Station, and COMMIT (the Centre of Operations for Maintenance and Monitoring of Installations and Telecommunications).

Community of Metros News: Chengdu and Chongqing Rail Transit Joined COMET

October 11, 2025March 20, 2025

The TSC is delighted to announce that Chengdu Metro and Chongqing Rail Transit, both based in China, officially joined the COMET community in March.

Chengdu Metro began operations in 2010 and has grown impressively to over 600 kilometres in just 15 years, making it the 4^th largest metro in the world by total network length, following Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing. The system is known for its modern design, with clear digital signage and passenger information systems. It serves an average of 3.5 million passengers daily.

Chongqing Rail Transit operates 12 lines covering more than 550 kilometres. The network includes two high-capacity monorail lines—Lines 2 and 3—which are the longest and busiest monorail lines globally. Their system also features the world’s deepest metro station, located 116 metres underground, showcasing the city’s unique topography and engineering innovation.

We warmly welcome Chengdu and Chongqing to the group and look forward to their contributions to our global metro benchmarking and knowledge-sharing community.

Community of Metros News: COMET 2024 Annual Meeting in Singapore, 21-24 October

November 21, 2024November 1, 2024

The TSC was very honoured to participate in the successful COMET 2024 Annual Meeting hosted by Singapore SMRT last week. The event brought together approximately 85 metro leaders from 28 cities around the world. Under the theme of “Building Fundamentals and Resilience”, the event included the CEO / COO Day where metro leaders openly shared their experiences about preparing for future needs relating to service quality, financial sustainability, and staffing.

The delegates had the opportunity to visit SMRT’s Kim Chuan Depot, where SMRT showcased their cutting-edge in-house technology to ensure system safety and reliability. During the event, member metros celebrated COMET’s 30^th anniversary together. The remarks from Hong Kong MTR and Buenos Aires EMOVA highlighted the collaboration, benchmarking, and knowledge exchange amongst metro peers in the past three decades.

The TSC is incredibly proud of the partnership with members from the 45 metro organisations around the world. We very much look forward to many more years of collaboration in the future.

Community of Metros News: Chennai Metro Joins COMET

November 21, 2024October 25, 2024

The TSC warmly welcomes Chennai Metro who recently joined COMET to become the third Indian metro in the group after New Delhi and Bengaluru.

Chennai city houses more than one-third of India’s automobile industry and is one of the leading IT hubs in India. Chennai Metro started revenue service in 2015. Currently the system consists of two lines and 41 stations, spanning 54.1 km. The existing ridership is approximately 300,000 a day. Unlike most other Asian metros, Chennai Metro outsources most of its operations and maintenance work.

Community of Metros News: Recent Virtual Events

October 3, 2024September 24, 2024

The TSC continues to present key findings of recent studies through webinars to reach a wider audience within the members metros. The Congestion Management Webinar was held in June, looking at best practices to handle congestion both on platforms and trains. It focuses on technology solutions, training, and deployment of staff. Members heard very informative presentations from Seoul Metro, Metro de Santiago, and Taipei TRTC on their challenges and solutions for congestion management.

The Employee Satisfaction Webinar was held in July presenting an insight into several aspects of employee satisfaction in metros, including measuring satisfaction, metro survey results, and implemented initiatives. MRT Jakarta and London Underground shared information on their latest employee satisfaction initiatives as well as the outcomes.

*Example slide from Employee Satisfaction Webinar on key drivers of employee satisfaction across the group*

In July, members gathered together online for the second Virtual General Meeting of the year. The TSC gave members an update on member participation, ridership recovery, and group development.

In addition, the TSC presented the Data Insight Webinar to members last week sharing the latest data findings from the KPI and daily / monthly data. The highlight of the webinar also includes the results from the 2024 Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSS). There are 30 COMET members participated in the CSS this year, with Atlanta MARTA, Washington WMATA, and Honolulu Skyline taking part for the first time.

Community of Metros News: COMET 2024 Western Meeting in Washington DC, 25-28 June

October 3, 2024July 2, 2024

COMET members and the TSC had a very fruitful meeting in June in Washington, DC. Washington WMATA successfully hosted the COMET 2024 Western Meeting, receiving attendees from 20 metros across all regions. The focussed sessions looked at hot topics for the western world, including safety and security, smooth upgrades to fleet and signalling, resilience and fiscal sustainability, and a metro roundtable on workforce development and retention.

Delegates were invited to the technical visit to the new Metro Integrated Command and Communication Centre, where WMATA showed preparations for the upcoming Fourth of July celebrations.

Research: Energy Storage Systems for Regenerative Braking

June 12, 2024May 31, 2024

The study builds on the previous COMET study on Energy Efficiency, which was conducted last year as metros experienced increasing energy costs driven up by the conflict in Ukraine. This study examined how members use recovered braking energy and reviewed the extent and use of energy storage systems amongst members, particularly to increase the efficiency of regenerative braking.

The data shows that the average share of traction energy obtained from regenerative braking is 27% across members, however there are notable differences between fleets and technologies. Key findings of the study cover areas of energy storage systems, relevant technologies, and benefits of using energy storage systems. The report includes several mini-case studies of metros who currently have or are in the advanced stages of implementation of energy storage systems for regenerative braking. These include examples from Washington WMATA, Ottawa OC Transpo, Seoul Metro, and Tokyo Metro.