Workshop – Community of Metros Benchmarking Group

Community of Metros News: CBTC Workshop in New York, 10-13 July

August 29, 2023July 28, 2023

An expert workshop on Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) took place in July, hosted by New York NYCT. The workshop was hosted jointly with the International Suburban Rail Benchmarking Group (ISBeRG) of TSC. Over the course of three days, forty attendees joined from sixteen metros and one railway who were planning, installing, or had already implemented CBTC.

TSC and members presented on three key themes: challenges when migrating to CBTC, how to prepare for implementation of CBTC, and how to best leverage CBTC to benefit metro operations. The delegates had in-depth discussions around these topics and exchanged ideas based on their own experience.

Members also took part in technical visits to the NYCT Rail Control Center as well as the Corona Maintenance Yard to view signalling infrastructure. Additionally, New York PATH welcomed delegates to their operational control center based in New Jersey. Very positive feedback was received after the event and members are looking forward to the next in-person CBTC workshop.

Community of Metros News: Latest Virtual Events

February 17, 2023January 5, 2023

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.

Expert Workshop: Energy Saving Strategies

September 30, 2014

Experts from 19 urban railways met to discuss energy saving strategies at a workshop hosted by TMB Barcelona. Fifteen CoMET and Nova metros and four suburban railway operators were represented at the workshop, which built on the CoMET 2012 ‘Energy Saving Strategies’ research project.
Over two days, attendees investigated the measures taken by metros to improve energy efficiency and the factors affecting metro energy consumption; and sought to share good practice in management and procurement of energy.
The workshop brought together energy experts from metros and railways, in a confidential environment to allow experts to share new ideas and take away evidence of successful practices and lessons learnt elsewhere. The workshop also helps build a network of peer contacts to enable ongoing collaboration between energy experts.
In addition to brief energy introduction presentations from each participating operator, the workshop included detailed discussion of traction energy, non-traction energy, energy supply & monitoring, and carbon emissions; a presentation on the SEAM4US European research project, and technical visits to see Barcelona TMB’s high voltage substation.

Research: Incident Response & Recovery: Phase 2 Study and Workshop

March 26, 2014February 20, 2014

Following the success of the CoMET 2011 case study on Improving Incident Response and Recovery, a drill-down study was proposed to understand some of the best practices identified in more detail. The drill-down study added to the detailed incident data collected in Phase 1 and completed a more disaggregated analysis of the data, looking at detailed causes and the durations associated with incidents of different causes. An area of particular interest to the case study sponsors was the organisation of incident management, and here the ‘strategic-tactical-operational’ (gold-silver-bronze) structure adopted in two European metros was recommended. The sponsoring metro has since contacted these metros to learn more about this structure.

A crucial part of this Phase 2 study was a workshop, bringing together incident response experts from ten CoMET and Nova metros, as well as two members of CoMET and Nova’s sister benchmarking group for suburban railways, ISBeRG. This workshop resulted in the development of 14 ‘golden rules’ for incident response and recovery, which provide clear and concise guidance to metros and have since been adopted by a European metro. Similarly, an American metro is implementing best practices from the case study in resource distribution, infrastructure maintenance, and emergency response. A key recommendation arising from the workshop was the use of ‘hot debriefs’ to ask staff how the management of an incident could have been improved, immediately after the event; this good practice has since been taken on by a European metro.