Community of Metros News

Research: Sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance Factors in Metros

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is an approach to sustainability that reflects social responsibility and care of employees in addition to environmental impacts. It is a concept that is influencing companies around the world, who are motivated by climate change and changing societal expectations.

The first and foremost motivation for studying ESG across COMET members is the intensifying climate change crisis. As transport is a major contributor to carbon emissions, there are discussions on how to decarbonise all forms of transport. From the societal perspective, there are shifting attitudes and expectations about inclusivity, transparency, and transport as a social good, to which the information age has brought greater awareness.

The study are compiles metros’ ESG policies and strategies and explores the measurement and monitoring tools used by member metros as well as the challenges and lessons learned from implementation. It reviews policies, initiatives, and data in selected areas of focus such as energy, environment, diversity, and public engagement.

Community of Metros News: COMET 2023 Western Meeting in San Francisco, 19-21 April

COMET fully resumed in-person meetings in 2023, with the first successful meeting held by San Francisco BART in April. It brought together 22 metros discussing topics of fare evasion, recruitment and retention, crime and disorder, and energy efficiency.

The delegates visited BART Powell Street station and Hayward Maintenance Yard. The technical visits also included a tour of fare gate prototypes installed at the Rockridge station and a visit to San Francisco Central Subway.

During the meeting sessions, metros shared the latest development of their own systems, and heard detailed information from the metro spotlight presentations, including San Francisco BART’s presentation on the new rolling stock project, and Berlin BVG’s presentation on their measures of combating crime and disorder.

Community of Metros News: Atlanta MARTA Joins COMET

Transport Strategy Centre (TSC) is delighted to announce that MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) has recently joined COMET becoming the newest member. MARTA, serving the city of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), has been providing public transportation services since 1979. The rapid transit system has 77km of network and 38 stations located on four lines – Red, Gold, Blue and Green Line. The headway at weekday peak hours is currently 15 minutes. Increase of the peak hour frequency to every 12 minutes is planned to launch later this year.

Source: MARTA

Research: Digital Transformation of Rolling Stock Maintenance

Digital transformation of rolling stock maintenance includes using remote condition monitoring to collect real-time train information as well as using digital tools for rolling stock maintenance. Through digital transformation, metros expect to improve fleet availability, asset reliability, and maintenance efficiency.

This study brought together information from 30 metros, exploring the current condition of rolling stock maintenance and metros’ plans associated with digital transformation. Metros’ current and planned projects for digital transformation of rolling stock maintenance were summarised across five key areas: monitoring, maintenance depot systems, organisational structure, data management, and data security & performance monitoring.

To support metros along the digital transformation progress, the study also provided recommendations on the future road map for digital transformation of rolling stock maintenance. It laid out the key principles during different stages of digital transformation including planning, developing, testing, and implementing stages.

Community of Metros News: Latest Virtual Events

COMET continued to hold various virtual events in the second half of 2022. These include:

  • Data Webinar on Key Performance Indicators and Customer Satisfaction Survey Results
  • Case Study Webinar on Customer Assistance in Low Staff Environments
  • General meeting where members shared challenges and initiatives relating to attracting and retaining staff in the Metro Roundtable session and TSC presented the latest benchmarking findings from the COMET KPIs and a summary of the Staff Retirement Trends express study
Example Recruitment Campaign from Washington DC WMATA
  • CEO/COO Sessions with the theme of Continuing Recovery While Facing New Challenges. Metro executives had discussions on the recent challenges associated with demand recovery and the energy crisis. Highlights from KPI benchmarking were also presented by TSC with a focus on COVID-19 impacts on metro performance.
  • CBTC Workshop held jointly between COMET and ISBeRG (International Suburban Rail Benchmarking Group). The experts from the two groups exchanged their experiences with planning, implementing, and operating CBTC.

Research: Customer Assistance in Low Staff Environment

In recent years, the use of self-assistance tools in stations has accelerated – driven by technological development, staff shortages, and reduced face-to-face contact during COVID-19. Considering emerging financial challenges, many metros are now reviewing station staffing models with the aim of improving operational efficiency while maintaining a good customer experience. Changing customer behaviours and staff shortages are key drivers of staff reductions, but there are also other drivers affecting station staffing models such as external policies and levels of crime.

Factors Affecting Station Staffing Models

This study included responses from 31 metros reviewing factors impacting staffing level decisions, customer service challenges in low staff stations, station staffing models, and opportunities to reduce staff. Examples of innovations to reduce staffing requirements across key areas of station staff responsibilities e.g. ticketing and customer information, were also presented, along with best practices carried out by metros and the most impactful tools used by both customers and staff in low staff stations.

Research: Staff Retirement Trends

Managing an ageing workforce is a challenge for many metro operators, with some reporting large waves of retirement where significant numbers of highly qualified and experienced staff are lost. The impact of this on metro operations has been compounded by staff shortages more generally related to recruitment and retention challenges since COVID-19 began. The study included information from 27 metros with regard to their growing staffing concerns and best practices for managing staff retirement.

Metros reported the impacts of retirement, retention and recruitment on staff shortages pre COVID-19, now and in the future. By 2022, almost half (48%) of metros perceived recruitment to be an issue, while retirement was considered a major or minor issue in a quarter of metros (26%) and retention had become an important issue in a third of metros (35%).

A number of measures have been taken by metros to respond to short-term staff shortages, and in the longer term to help retain institutional knowledge. The study identified good practices and actions for mitigating impacts of staff shortages and addressing longer term skills gaps.

Research: Flood Management in Metros

Flood management is an increasingly emerging issue for metros associated with climate change and extreme weather. Most metros are expecting more frequent flooding events of greater severity in the future, and are thus interested in learning from each other on flood prevention and management. This study gathered information from 31 metros and looked into influential factors to flooding, velnerability assessment, and flood prevention and management initiatives.

Managing a flood is similar to incident management more widely. An operational response process starts an alert, an incident is declared, the situation is managed / water is contained, and operations are managed to prioritise safety, maintain service levels where possible, and keep customers informed.

Based on metros’ previous experiences with flooding, the study presented the key lessons learned by metros and their improvements for flood preparation and management. These cover the areas of infrastructure design, operational response, as well as maintenance and inspections.

Community of Metros News: Latest Virtual Events

As well as the recent in-person COMET Reconnects meeting held in London in May 2022, COMET has held a variety of virtual events in the second quarter of 2022 with very active engagement from metros. These include:

  • Two general meetings where metros participated in:
    • Roundtable discussions on rolling stock management and procurement, major line and signalling upgrades and latest challenges, COVID-19 circumstances and demand forecasts;
    • Summary presentations on ongoing COMET studies (Fare Evasion, Digital Transformation of Rolling Stock Maintenance, Sustainability and Environmental Social Governance Strategies).
  • Webinar on Flood Management in Metros covering metros’ vulnerability to flooding, vulnerability assessments, stakeholder engagement, infrastructural design, operational management and lessons learned from previous flooding experiences.
Extract from Flood Management in Metros Webinar (held July 2022)

Upcoming events include webinars on Key Performance Indicators and Customer Satisfaction Survey Results, and Customer Assistance in Low Staff Environments. The current list of COMET members is here.

Mexico City STC Begins Line 1 Modernisation Project

Mexico City STC presented a session to COMET on their recently launched Line 1 Modernisation Project, the organisation’s biggest undertaking in its history. Line 1 will be closed in two phases from July 2022 – August 2023 to implement the works, which include installing new track system, Communications Based Train Control (CBTC) signalling, new communications, audio, visual and CCTV systems, a new energy supply system and the acquisition of 29 new trains. STC is aiming to deliver a number of benefits, notably improved safety and a 30% uplift in capacity (improving headways to 100 seconds), offering better service reliability, comfort and reduced waiting times for passengers.

Line 1 in Mexico City is one of the busiest metro lines in the world, serving as the central artery for one of the world’s largest cities. After more than 50 years of service a full modernisation is essential to sustain the line and to enhance capacity to world-class levels. Metros across the world must invest to renew and enhance their assets to manage ageing and to respond to customer needs, so it is great to see this project going ahead.

Alex Barron, COMET Project Director, Transport Strategy Centre at Imperial College London

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