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CILTHK Newsletter issue 9 03
We want to ensure that companies
have incentives to provide new
services and raise standards; that
taxpayers’ money is spent wisely to
make public transport available for all
and that services are regulated in the
public interest.
The way forward is through an
integrated transport policy. This
means integration: -
• Within and between different
types of transport, so that each
works properly and people can
make easy connections between
them
• With the environment, so that
our transport choices cause less
damage
• With land use planning, to
support more sustainable travel
choices
• With policies for education,
health and wealth creation, so
that transport helps to make a
fairer, more inclusive society.
Fine words but, of course, the
challenge is to turn them into reality.
The Global Dimension
Urban transport is extraordinarily
complex – but, by definition, it would
seem to be local in nature, confined
by city boundaries. Although
increasingly we live in a global world,
we might assume that this is not
relevant to the provision of urban
transport. Metros, for example, do
not compete for the same markets.
However, urban transport is no
longer self-contained – for several
reasons
• First, because of the
interrelationship between longdistance
rail and national and
international aviation, and
urban distribution. Airports are
increasingly looking to develop
rail links to improve
uncongested access.
• More and more commuters
around the world live in one
community, often semi-rural,
while travelling long distances to
work in city centres.
But globalization provides a yet more
important impulse to the provision of
good urban transport. Major cities like
London, New York, Tokyo are now
‘world cities’ in every sense, and not
just national headquarters. Paris,
Frankfurt, Hong Kong are in the same
category. I have no doubt that the
terrorists who struck New York were
very clear about its ‘world’ status.
World cities compete to attract the
world’s leading businesses, as well as
the world’s tourists. A significant part of
this competition involves the provision
of high quality transport that is still, in
an age of electronic communication,
essential to the well-being of urban life
and efficiency. But globalization
impacts urban transport for another
reason – the globalization of the
professions.
And we can be truly collaborative
because the success of one of us does
not imply the failure of another – as
may be the case with global businesses
such as the automobile industry or
pharmaceuticals.
Benchmarking
This has led us at Imperial College to be
involved in a unique benchmarking
exercise.
The first metro in the world was opened
in London in 1863. Some of the largest
are of much more recent vintage than
London (Tokyo 1927, Moscow 1935,
Hong Kong 1979).
The Railway Technology Strategy Centre
(RTSC) is part of the University of
London Centre for Transport Studies in
the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Imperial
College. RTSC was established in 1992,
assisted by funding from the then
British Rail, as a centre of excellence
serving the railway industry on
strategic, technology and economic
issues, in the UK and worldwide.
The early years of the RTSC were
dominated by projects in the UK,
principally for British Rail but also for
its successors in Railtrack, a rolling
stock leasing company and others, as
well as for London Underground.
Recent years have seen RTSC broaden
its international client base while
continuing its position as a strategy
and technology advisor to many of
the UK’s major rail industry
enterprises.
RTSC serves as a benchmarking centre
for two consortia of urban railways –
CoMET (the Community of Metros),
who are leading operators of
underground railways (metros) around
the world, and NOVA. Their members
are
• CoMET - Berlin, Hong Kong
(MTRC), London (LUL), Mexico
City, Moscow, New York, Paris
(RATP and RER), Sao Paolo,
Tokyo
and
• NOVA – Dublin, Glasgow, Hong
Kong (KCRC), Lisbon, Naples,
Madrid, Oslo, Singapore, Taipei,
Tyne and Wear (Nexus).
The benchmarking studies are
dedicated to assisting metros to
identify and implement best practice
through the application of
benchmarking comparisons and
detailed case study evaluations.
In 1989 an employee of the Xerox
Corporation in the USA wrote a paper
(Camp 1989) which defined the term,
‘Benchmarking - the search for
industry best practices that lead to
superior performance’. Xerox had
been in a fierce competitive battle
with the Japanese, whose approach
was gradually to improve
performance by getting the most out
of existing resources. This has been
described by some, not the Japanese,
as ‘making the assets sweat’.
It is important to recognize that
comparisons of business processes lie
at the heart of benchmarking. The
need for data collection and
comparison can lead to an erroneous
focus on the production of ‘league