Blog

Aug 19, 2023

MTR: Getting it right from day one

Originally set up to build an urban metro system to help meet Hong Kong’s

Originally set up to build an urban metro system to help meet Hong Kong's public transport requirements, the MTR Corporation is today regarded as one of the world's leading railway operators for safety, reliability, customer service and cost efficiency, operating rail networks in nine cities across Asia, Australia and Europe.

The Australian subsidiary, MTR Australia, is currently delivering the Trains, Signalling, Maintenance and Operations package for Sydney Metro City and Southwest. It is also the major shareholder of the operating companies for the Melbourne Metro rail network and Sydney Metro Northwest.

Given that background, it is no surprise to learn that MTR is also regarded as a specialist in setting up metro operations successfully from the first day, often called on to offer advice on various rail projects.

MTR Australia's senior manager for, business development and operations and maintenance, Dale Mitchell, speaks to Rail Express about the lessons learned from transitioning a project to an operational railway, and the pitfalls to avoid.

"There are three key areas metro operators must consider: trial operations, the readiness of assets for handover, and the readiness of the organisation for handover," he said.

TRIAL OPERATIONS

"MTR has valuable real world experience to share," Mitchell said.

"We are vertically integrated, meaning we do everything from project planning, design and construction, operations and maintenance, and asset renewal, along with our Rail + Property business, which manages a variety of residential and commercial buildings.

"When it comes to trial operations and new rail line openings, MTR has opened eight railway lines in the last four years globally, including in Hong Kong, Beijing, London and Sydney. We are also currently planning three more in both Australia and mainland China."

Of course, there is currently a large pipeline of automated metro projects throughout Sydney and Melbourne alone.

"Sydney's plan is based around placemaking and improving access to Greater Wester Sydney, with Sydney Metro the government authority delivering the four projects that are transforming the city," Mitchell said.

Sydney Metro Northwest, which is operated by Metro Trains Sydney (MTS) – an MTR-led consortium including John Holland and UGL – opened in 2019 and was the first GoA4 (automatic) railway in Australia.

Work is well underway for the city and southwest sections, extending the metro across the harbor and underneath the city.

"We have recently commenced testing and commissioning of the city section. In April, Sydney Metro Northwest won the Infrastructure Partnership Australia award for Operator and Service Provider Excellence, demonstrating the ongoing excellence that is being delivered at MTS," Mitchell said.

The separate Western Sydney Airport Line is currently under construction and will open at the same time as the Western Sydney Airport in 2026, to be followed by Sydney Metro West, for which procurement is currently underway.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, the detailed planning and some early works for the Suburban Rail Loop project is currently underway and will eventually deliver a GoA4 loop around the city connecting the Melbourne passenger rail network. The procurement for the East section is commencing this year.

"The existing Melbourne passenger network, also operated by an MTR-led consortium, Metro Trains Melbourne, will undertake trial operations later this year for its Metro Tunnel Project, which is a new tunnel under the city, and will operate the new HCMT rolling stock in a combination of automated CBTC signalling under the tunnel with existing adjoining sections running under traditional signalling," Mitchell said.

He said in order to achieve successful day one operations, which include the delivery of a reliable operations managed by competent staff, experience has demonstrated that there are a number of things to get right during trial operations.

These are:

"If a trial operations plan is well designed and executed, the result for day one of operations will be a reliably performing asset, with employees who are competent and ready to manage the railway," he said.

"Although it is important to note that even following a successful trial operation, there is still an expected reliability growth period in which difficult to identify defects will present themselves.

"The approximate 70 days of major incident-free train-running should be achieved at or near the operator's ultimate timetable. Based on factors such as the frequency of line openings for the organisation, or the complexity of the project being delivered, this number can move up or down.

"Experience also tells us that we should expect about 30 per cent of planned days to be lost due to faults and major defects, changes in priorities, staffing availability and errors or other unforeseen circumstances.

"At Sydney Metro Northwest, we opened the railway on time, although we had to shorten the trial operations period to a total of seven weeks, with 40 days of trial running.

"Through the shortened trial operations period on the Northwest, we decided to operate at an initially higher headway of 12 trains per hour (TPH) while the reliability of the system grew.

"As the reliability built over the first few months, so did the service, building to the 15 TPH in the third month of operations.

"Following the opening of the line, reliability grew over the initial six months up to the leading levels that are now being experienced by passengers."

Mitchell said that major reliability issues in these first few months where things that would traditionally be rectified during a longer trial operation, such as first responders not familiar with protocols, the operations centre experienced a high volume of nuisance or unnecessary alarms, and dust impacting fire alarms.

"Following these initial reliability figures, the Sydney Metro Northwest quickly and consistently began to operate as not only the best performing railway in Australia, it also consistently has the best customer satisfaction rates in Australia," Mitchell said.

ASSETS READY FOR HANDOVER

Mitchell said the most critical assets that provided the most operationally impacting defects in a new metro were likely to be either software or interface-related.

"Software issues relating to the communications and signalling systems are likely to cause a variety of defects, from false alarms through to complete shutdown or failure of systems," he said.

"While there can be patches places on software to mitigate defects or provide workarounds, a software update or re-baseline is generally required to completely address the defect.

"In our experience, it will likely take two software re-baselines to rectify the most disruptive of the defects that will be discovered during and before trial operations.

"Given the resources and testing required to undertake a complete software realignment, it will likely take about three months to implement."

Another key defect area is the interface between assets which are often delivered by separate contractors but require significant integration through joint dynamic modelling and design optimisation.

"These defects are typically more challenging to correct given that it may not be immediately apparent what the solution is, given that both of the systems will likely be compliant to standards," Mitchell said.

"This results in longer time to investigate, determine the most cost-effective system to correct and then complete the engineering, procurement and delivery of the solution. It is less likely however that these defects will result in total system failure greatly impacting reliability.

"Construction activities and T&C's should be completed in their entirety prior to trial operations commencing, with temporary procedures for managing outstanding works minimised."

Mitchell said, from experience, there were some defects that have been evident multiple times, such as:

"Further to performing good factory acceptance testing, ongoing expert support will be required post trial operations, and we have found that posting the suppliers’ experts into the control centre during traffic hours is critical to identifying and responding appropriately to arising issues," Mitchell said.

A GoA4 Railway specification will require a stopping accuracy for the train at the platform screen door (PSD). If the train does not achieve the specified accuracy, it will result in the automated system inching back and forth to get into position, which causes a delay to operations particularly with tight headways.

Adopting a pragmatic solution to this issue was achieved on the South Island line (Hong Kong) where the stopping accuracy was relaxed from 300mm to 450mm, which still provided sufficient room for departing and alighting passengers.

"Workmanship has also resulted in defects with PSDs, with regards to cables being laid incorrectly or micro-switch adjustment being wrong, resulting in platform-wide PSD failure, Mitchell said.

"As PSDs are not a commonly installed device, it is difficult to source construction teams with experience in installing these sensitive units. We have had success where we have required there to be an engineer on site who is familiar with the PSD construction who can lead the installation team.

"Due to the movement of trains, a resulting pressure differential between tunnel and station area can cause the PSDs to not be able to open. During trial operations, it is important to run a full service, including degraded running conditions, or this issue (among others) may not present itself until you are running full operations. Door operating mechanism and ventilation systems all need to be designed to account for these conditions."

Mitchell said passengers who are not familiar with PSD operation could also inadvertently cause system delays by not standing adequately clear, forcing doors open or not allowing them to close or getting caught by rushing through closing doors. Staff presence and clear messaging, particularly during early operational periods, is vital to passenger education around new assets.

Excessive arcing has been known to arise from a mismatch between dynamic performance of the overhead and the pantograph. This was evident in MTR Hong Kong where the transition bar stiffness was causing a poor transition.

"The stiffness profile was reviewed and optimised which reduced the arcing in these locations," Mitchell said.

"All of these problems should be identified before or during trial operations and technical solutions deployed for permanent fix.

"In order to ensure there is appropriate time to fix all of these defects, you need to plan to have time in your trial operations program. If there is insufficient time for defect rectification, there will be defects that are carried into day one of operations."

ORGANISATIONAL READINESS FOR OPERATIONS

Trial operations are not only about getting assets performing, but they are also about getting people and processes ready for the first passenger service and beyond, and all the unexpected issues that will come in the initial period.

Focusing on having the right people in place early is important. Different groups need to be engaged at different times, for example:

"To achieve this, it will be necessary to perform early and targeted recruitment of staff, as well as ensuring contracts are in place with outsourced maintainers and service providers to allow time for training prior to trail operations," Mitchell said.

"During this time staff should be gaining experience and optimising their response plans rather than learning them.

"Outside of people, supporting systems need to be ready for day one of operations also.

"Getting asset information from the constructors presents a number of challenges. Without defining a clear structure of how you want to receive asset information, it is likely that it will be presented in a number of inconsistent ways, which will then take a lot of time and effort to input into the asset information systems."

Mitchell said a robust change management program would also be required to ensure that the inevitable changes throughout the project are managed in accordance with the operational requirements, and that there would be no surprises when performing defect walkthroughs or receiving as-builts.

"With materials and components, ensure sufficient spare parts are in place in time for commencement of trial operations," he said.

"For all major changes, MTR implements a regime of babysitting or hypercare for new lines or operations until the reliability reaches a steady-state, which brings in additional staff, both customer service staff and maintainers.

"When the delivery contractor is also responsible for maintenance, understand that it will likely be a different team that performs the construction and maintenance, so ensure that the arrangement involves having the maintenance teams on hand during trial operations so the knowledge doesn't leave, which has occurred for various systems including CBTC and PSDs at a number of our operations."

Another lesson learnt was around asset handover.

"We aim to invest in data scientists to take the large manuals and put the important key information into a maintenance system that supports the maintainers," Mitchell said.

"Providing to the contractors operator-led taxonomy for assets, as well as specifying how the detail is provided, will allow us to populate the asset information system early and accurately."

EXPERIENCE COUNTS

"Setting up for a successful first day of operations is a challenge for every railway, and there are many unique factors influencing each of openings," Mitchell said.

"Experience has shown us that you need to have an experienced team managing the operational readiness strategy and there are always more lessons to be learnt.

"Each line opening has its own unique set of influencing factors, and there are a variety of approaches that would deliver a successful day one and beyond.

"With the amount of investment that the rail industry is receiving globally, and the amount of new metro systems in the pipeline, this is going to be an area that we will continue to optimise and learn lessons from experience."