OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE
How a metro system can change a city With major metro rail projects underway in both Melbourne and Sydney, Rail Express spoke with global operator Keolis Downer about how high frequency metro services can transform a city.
A
USTRALIA’S LARGEST PUBLIC transport project, Sydney Metro, is well underway and achieving significant milestones towards its 2024 completion. Once completed, Sydney Metro will extend from the north west, starting at Rouse Hill, through the underground city stations travelling under Sydney Harbour, and beyond to the south west, ending in Bankstown. The West Sydney Metro will also link up the Greater Western Sydney area and the new Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport, connecting it to the Sydney CBD. Ultimately, Sydney will have a 66km standalone metro railway system with fully-automated driverless and fast, just turn up and go, service. Though some of it is complete, most of the work towards Sydney Metro project is still in early construction stages, with tunnels construction, station excavation and structural works currently taking place, and station construction to commence next year. In Melbourne, work is underway towards building 9km twin rail tunnels and underground stations from the west of the city to the south-east as part of a new Sunbury to Cranbourne/Pakenham line, which will be upgraded with next-generation highcapacity signalling. The tunnel is expected to free up space in the city loop to enable more trains to run and maximise capacity. To gain an understanding of the new metro landscape, Rail Express spoke to Keolis Downer’s chair, Australia, Leila Frances, about the company’s significant experience across the metro project lifecycle. Internationally, Keolis Downer operates metros in France and the UK and is building others in India, the Middle East and China. It launched the first automated metro in the world in Lille, France in
www.railexpress.com.au
1983, and has significant experience across the project lifecycle, from early operator involvement, including the design and build of the metro infrastructure, to operations and maintenance. The company has experience with both brownfield, 40-year-old legacy assets, as well as greenfield, absolutely new metro systems. “The thing about metro is that it’s a high-volume mover. Metro has been shown in research to provide the highest capacity transport solution for greater population densities.” While this has a lot to do with the infrastructure, as Frances explained, a lot of it is due to the speed of the service. “The journey time is very rapid. There is a shorter headway than traditional rail services, and as metros operate at a very high frequency the wait time is short and so is the journey time. It’s a turn up and go service. From the passenger’s point of view, their journey starts when they step out their door and this is when they measure how long it takes to get from point A to point B. With metro, especially in these congested cities in peak times, the journey time is much quicker than a car.” With NSW’s population expected to grow to around 9 million over the next 20 years –bringing with it an increase in congestion with more passengers on trains and buses and more traffic on roads – the high capacity solution that metro bring is important. According to the NSW government, once the metro is functioning, capacity will rise from 120 an hour today to up to 200 services beyond 2024, a 60 per cent capacity increase across the network to meet demand. This, the government says, is “a level of service never before seen in Sydney”. The target capacity of Sydney’s metro is about 40,000 customers per hour, similar
Keolis Downer operates metros internationally.
RAIL EXPRESS | ISSUE 9 2019
39
