Sydney Metro has joined the Nova group of metros. It is a new fully automated (GoA4) metro system being built in Sydney, Australia’s largest city. The first section, known as Sydney Metro Northwest, opened in May 2019 with a 4-minute peak headway. The initial segment features 23km and 8 stations newly built and the existing 13km, 5-station Epping to Chatswood rail link (which opened in 2009 and was operated by Sydney Trains until closing in September 2018 for metro conversion).
Source: Transport for NSW
Currently passengers interchange onto Sydney Trains services at Epping and Chatswood to continue to central Sydney, but Sydney Metro City & Southwest is currently under construction and will extend the line a total of 31km, including a new tunnel under Sydney Harbour and the Central Business District and the takeover of another existing Sydney Trains line in the southwest area, scheduled for 2024.
Sixteen members of CoMET and three members of Nova joined the CoMET Annual Meeting hosted by Paris RATP from 11th – 15th November 2019. During the meeting, members heard the latest updates from each metro as well as the case study presentations on Managing and Reducing Absenteeism, Station Staffing Models, and Managing Works Affecting Revenue Service.
Four structured discussion sessions were held in the CEO/COO day: Ridership Trends, Metro Reliability, Workforces for the Future, and Digital Transformation of Metros. Several metros delivered presentations to share their good practices.
The technical visit brought members to Châtelet Metro and RER Station as well as the control centre for RER Line A and Line B. After the meeting, members also had the opportunity to visit the Line 14 Extension Project, Line 14 Operational Control Centre, Line 4 Automation Project, and General Control Centre for all modes (metro, tram, bus, RER).
Absenteeism presents widespread impacts of loss of productivity, delays and reduced morale that would affect metros’ efficiency and reliability. Currently CoMET and Nova have an average staff absenteeism rate of 4.7% (based on 2018 data), creating significant challenges for managing service provision. This study investigated levels of absenteeism at CoMET and Nova metros, identified and explored underlying causes of absenteeism, and discussed best practices to manage and/or reduce absenteeism. In discussing the factors that metros have identified that lead to absence, it is clear that absenteeism does not have one single cause and is influenced by multiple internal and external factors. It therefore requires a comprehensive set of solutions to manage and reduce.
Approaches and actions to manage and reduce absenteeism focus on measurement and management of absence data and positive approaches to employee relations. Initiatives within these categories help ensure that metros understand the scale of the issue across different organisational parameters (such as absenteeism rates by team) as well as developing an overall culture of care and trust between management and labour.
16 members of Nova and two members of CoMET met in Barcelona from 24th – 27th September 2019 for the Nova Phase 22 Management Meeting, hosted by Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona.
During the week, members heard presentations from across the CoMET and Nova Key Performance Indicators Balanced Scorecard, as well as study presentations on Reliability of Signalling Equipment, Modern Maintenance Practices and Energy Saving Strategies. Members also exchanged their latest activities, challenges and initiatives during meeting sessions.
The annual Management Meeting is where the upcoming Nova work programme is determined by the members. The next phase’s work programme will consist of three studies on the topics of preventative actions to avoid human-related failures in train operation and in the Operational Control Centre (OCC), innovations to reduce track time to do capital and maintenance works, and customer experience in stations.
Members also had the opportunity to use TMB’s metro network extensively, and visited Line 10’s ZAL depot to learn about how TMB carries out engineering and maintenance.
The Nova metro benchmarking group convened in Vancouver, Canada for the Phase 21 Annual Meeting. British Columbia Rapid Transit Company (BCRTC) welcomed 13 metros from around the world from 13th-16th May, including Mexico City STC visiting from Nova’s sister group CoMET. Members were welcomed to the meeting by Kevin Desmond, CEO of BCRTC’s parent organisation TransLink, and Haydn Acheson, CEO at BCRTC.
On Monday 13th May, the North American members of Nova convened to discuss issues of critical importance in the region, notably equity and outreach initiatives, automation and experiences with Public Private Partnerships (PPPs or P3s), and maintenance organisational structures.
The full international group convened from 14th-16th May to hear the latest benchmarking information from the Transport Strategy Centre (TSC) at Imperial College London and to participate in peer-to-peer discussion. Studies presented at the meeting by the TSC included Passenger Incident Management, Managing and Reducing Absenteeism, Employee Engagement, and Planning and Scheduling Works Affecting Revenue Service, as well as a Key Performance Indicators and Safety Performance Indicators presentation. Members also discussed topics of strategic importance to metros, such as future revenue streams and managing passenger flow.
BCRTC’s SkyTrain system is a fully driverless network and Nova benchmarking incorporates data from the Expo and Millennium Lines.
OC Transpo in Ottawa, Canada has joined the Nova group of metros as part of the North American Sub-Group. OC Transpo (the Ottawa-Carleton Transportation Commission) is the public transport provider for Ottawa, which is Canada’s capital and 4th largest city. OC Transpo is known for having an extensive busway network constructed and opened in the 1980s and 1990s. This network reached capacity in the early 2000s and is now being partly replaced by a new light metro line. At a city-wide level, public transport carries 22% of all morning peak travel in the city.
Source: OC Transpo
O-Train Line 1 (the Confederation Line) has 13 stations along a 12.5-km grade separated corridor that includes 3 underground stations in a 2.5-km tunnel through the city centre. The line will operate 100m-long trains at 3-min peak headways using ATO. Construction is beginning on extensions at both ends of the line that will add 27.5km and 16 stations by 2025.
The CoMET group convened in Madrid for the first meeting of the year. The CoMET 2019 Management Meeting welcomed all 17 members of CoMET for the first time since 2016. The group also welcomed metros visiting from Nova – Metropolitano de Lisboa, San Francisco BART, and Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona – and Tokyo Metro as observers to the meeting. Members were welcomed to the meeting by Borja Carabante, Chief Executive Officer at Metro de Madrid, and Rosalía Gonzales López, President of the Board of Directors of Metro de Madrid and the Regional Minister of Transport, Housing and Infrastructure.
The group was particularly honoured to share in Metro de Madrid’s 100th Anniversary celebrations, taking place throughout 2019. During the meeting, members had the opportunity to learn about the history of Metro de Madrid through visits to Chamberi station museum, where a variety of restored trains and artefacts are on display, and Chamartín station, which is a good example of historical station design. Members also learned about Metro de Madrid’s “Estación 4.0” where new innovations for the metro are tested.
Members also exchanged their latest activities, challenges and initiatives during meeting sessions, as well as focusing on preparations and lessons learned from major events. The RTSC presented latest benchmarking results from studies such as Energy Saving Strategies, Escalator Management (Availability, Assets and Safety), and Metro Security, as well as exploring key performance indicators focusing on key areas of metro operations and management.
The annual Management Meeting is where the upcoming CoMET work programme is determined by the members. After voting on 36 potential topics for study in 2019, the group agreed on four studies for 2019 – a large study focusing on station staffing models, real-time travel information, and focused studies on best practices using signage in stations and trains, and digital transformation of metros. The studies will be carried out by the Railway and Transport Strategy Centre (RTSC) at Imperial College London over the next year.
Technological advances have created the opportunity to transform maintenance practices to develop cost-efficient infrastructure management and improved system performance with regard to safety and reliability. To consider balance between preventive and corrective maintenance for managing track, switches and crossings, and civil structures, the study looked into what the optimal balance should be. Incorporating flexibility and slack into maintenance plans and focusing on dealing with the constraints of staff scheduling and limited track access, are strategies to increase the proportion of preventive works.
By analysing time-use during track access, the study identified major causal factors for lost time during possession to be travel and preparation. Therefore the strategies used by metros to reduce lost time were outlined in the study. The study also looked at key factors that influence maintenance costs, as well as examined metros’ outsourcing strategies.
Automation was seen to reduce the volume of labour necessary, particularly in labour intensive activities such as on-foot inspections. Three main areas of future maintenance practices with potential were identified: better data, improved maintenance practices, and renewals. Good practices in these areas were listed as examples in the report.
Trends concerning crime were found to be highly regionalised both for types of crimes committed (against person, property etc.) and evolution. Over the period from 2012 to 2017, the rate of crimes across CoMET and Nova metros is decreasing for 65%, with the largest decreases occurring primarily at Asian metros that already have very low crime levels.
(Am – American Metro, As – Asian Metro, Eu – European Metro)
Patrols and CCTV are ubiquitous means of surveillance though they have different secondary benefits. Nearly all metros reported that security staff are multifunctional and can respond to customer queries as well as providing crowd control and passenger assistance. This is also typically complemented by station staff notifying security of issues and monitoring CCTV.
Technological advances were identified as key drivers of change within metro security both to inform strategies and to monitor crime. The key areas where advanced technology for security are developing include passenger screening, smart cameras, the use of apps, and the provision of enhanced infrastructure (such as 5G networks).
On average for CoMET and Nova metros, passengers contribute to 17% of all incidents causing delays of five minutes or more. The causes of passenger incidents range from suicide, vandalism, passenger taking ill, etc. The breakdown of passenger related incidents by cause and by delay threshold shows although the frequency of suicides is very low, those incidents take the longest to resolve.
As well as detailed benchmarking of the passenger-related causes and impacts of incidents at metros, the case study outlined metros’ best practices in passenger incident management, including a data-driven approach in analysing passenger incident impacts, effective incident response by a clear chain of command, high levels of coordination with the emergency services, clear and consistent communications and procedures, appropriate staffing models and regular training with a focus on learning from past incidents.
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