WORLD’S BEST DRIVERLESS METRO LINES 2017 MARKET STUDY ON DRIVERLESS METRO LINES AND BENCHMARK OF NETWORK PERFORMANCE www.wavestone.com Wavestone is a consulting firm, created from the merger of Solucom and Kurt Salmon’s European Business (excluding retails and consumer goods outside of France) Wavestone’s mission is to enlighten and guide their clients in the most critical decisions, drawing on functional, sectoral and technological expertise. 2 Foreword In tomorrow’s megacities, citizens’ megacities which are coming into view selected route will take on increasing in emerging countries in Asia, Africa and importance (in France, journey length South America as well as the challenges grew by 63% between 1982 and 2008 presented by the peripheral urbanization according to INSEE, France’s National of highly dense big cities in developed Institute of Statistics and Economic European countries. Studies). This panorama on “smartization”, which At the same time, citizens’ habits regard- optimizes and streamlines urban mobil- ing transport change as a result of pres- ity highlights France as the flagship of sure, from environmental responsibility driverless metro system operations. The which is more present in their conscience momentum of its authorities and industry and, on the other hand, from congestion in the segment has propelled the country in city centers. The “transport mix” in big to the top of the pack in the global driv- cities has clearly shifted from the individ- erless metro market. ual car towards mass public transport. A transport system’s performance is based Faced with the challenge of transporting on strategic choices made over the long more passengers in a continuous and fluid term by the organizing transport authority way, and with the challenge of increasing and tactical and operating choices made line capacity that is already saturated, the by the operator. driverless metro system brings practical solutions: high headway (up to 60’’ for Through its vision, the organizing trans- Lille’s metro), high flexibility (adapting the port authority comes up with a transport service frequency to real time demand), solution that meets mobility demands high service level (24/7 service, e.g. modelled for several years (generally, the Copenhagen’s metro) and higher commer- organizing transport authority’s vision is cial speed (up to 44km/h in Vancouver). for a 10-30-year period). In reality, this choice which seems to have little impact In addition, driverless metro systems con- on metro line operations proves decisive siderably reduce operating costs (by up to for: 40%) mainly bringing with them human resources flexibility. This means public / Mobility quality perceived by the transport prices are significantly reduced user, closely linked to the density and accessible to more of the population. of the stations (varying between 0.54 station/km for Dubai and 2.17 By making the most of all these advan- stations/km for Lausanne), with tages, the driverless metro system will, the theoretical headway and there- in the next five years, strategically meet fore the transport system’s capac- the challenges of decongestion in the ity (varying between 1’ for the Lille *See glossary. 3 metro and 6’ for the Dubai metro), Transport service quality perceived by at the commercial speed brought the customer is also thought to be linked about by the choice of rolling stock to settings that are endogenous to oper- and accessibility, often standardized ations, which do not depend on the orga- by strict rules nizing transport authority. This perception / A recovery in the operator’s opera- of quality is achieved through a passen- tions which depend on the quality ger satisfaction level measured by the of the return good disposed of by operator itself, with the operator’s own the organizing transport authority indicators undergoing self-monitoring and the ageing of the network and i.e. monitoring by the organizing author- rolling stock. As a result, investment ity which seeks to measure the differ- for the operator and additional oper- ence between the thresholds set in the ating costs for maintenance are to be operations contract and users’ perceived planned for performance. The study shows that the operator has a Wavestone chose to compare users’ satis- much more important role to play than the faction levels in two domains for which the organizing transport authority in improv- operator’s margins are significant: peo- ing the service delivered to the customer: ple’s cleanliness and safety. For the first the transport experience. It may compen- domain, lines including Lyon, Barcelona, sate for choices made by the organizing Rennes and Taipei top the rankings with transport authority which are judged as positive opinions from users, reaching sub-optimal, ensuring a high rate of punc- 99.3% for Lyon, versus less than 70% tuality and frequency (varying between for Vancouver and Milan. For the second 93% for Lausanne and 99.73% for Taipei) domain, the operator’s efforts are cru- and a group of innovative connected ser- cial even if the socio-economic context vices which transform urban mobility. of the area served by the metro line Likewise, the operator’s expertise is cru- has an important role. Regarding safety, cial in guaranteeing efficient, reliable and Copenhagen, Dubai and Taipei come out above all profitable operations, particu- with user satisfaction rates that exceed larly for ageing networks and rolling stock 90%. such as that found on the following metro Nevertheless, the comparison of users’ systems: Lille (35 years’ old), Lyon (26), satisfaction between different networks Taipei (21) and Vancouver (31). Network remains a tricky task due: operations of this type may easily gen- erate uncontrollable maintenance costs / The difference in terms ofmethods which have a direct impact on the orga- for measurement between the differ- nizing transport authority and the user ent lines and the type of surveys or through a higher transport price. inquiries conducted 4 / The diverse nature of the socio-eco- Finally, in its analysis, Wavestone adopts nomic differences of the served areas, a weighting factor which reflects the between cities and even countries old-age of the infrastructure and rolling / Citizens’ different perceptions faced stock. At similar operating performance, a with qualitative issues (safety, clean- network with major operating constraints liness) based on their country due to its age, reveals an operator’s potentially more advanced competency. / The scope of the inquiry which varies A change to this factor would have an according to author (operator, orga- impact on the global ranking: by reducing nizing transport authority and third such this factor, the best metro lines in the party). The scope for an authority or ranking may see their rank lowered, but third party is often larger than that the score will no longer precisely reflect of an operator, which is sometimes their operational excellence. impartial As part of the development of its expertise in the trans- in the benchmark target as their context, ser- port sector, Wavestone’s Transport & Travel practice vice and operation are not comparable with has taken a deeper look at mass urban transport by “heavier” systems such as metros and are not drawing on the existing network of our international used in the same way. offices to enhance the knowledge base of our local and / The study analyses 25 of the 40 driverless metro international clients. lines existing worldwide in February 2017, for The trend of automation affecting all transport modes which information is considered as available, (including autonomous cars, autonomous buses and accessible and reliable, notably thanks to our hyperloops) quickly shifted the focus of the study to international offices, thus providing the items driverless metro lines, a mature and rapidly expanding necessary for a comparative analysis. technology, the data for which is fully accessible, unlike This survey is notably based on: those for disruptive systems, which are new and have / The collection of documents from different little market presence. sources and supported by Wavestone’s inter- To carry out the study, Wavestone limited the scope to national offices. a representative and coherent sample: / A series of interviews with major players in / Driverless metro lines* mainly transporting pas- urban transport and experts in the field. sengers on back-and-forth journeys including / Analysis work serving to compare driverless commutes. metro lines in three respects: the performance / Collective driverless transport lines such as light of infrastructure and rolling stock; the reliability rail transit (LRT)*, people movers* and auto- and quality of the service; and the innovation mated guided transit (AGT)* are not included demonstrated by the operators. *See glossary. 5 AUTHORS before pursuing it in transport and multimodal Philippe Menesplier mobility consulting. Generalist of passengers and fret transport, expert Philippe Menesplier, Partner, in externalities and LCA Life Cycle Assessment, he has more than 20 years Juliano works regularly on strategic benchmarks of experience in strategy and studies in the service of major industry players: and management consult- operators, transport organization authorities and ing. He managed numerous equipment manufacturers. studies and clients’ deliver- ies for urban mobility market [email protected] actors: organization, industrial strategy, optimiza- tion and lean management.