Notes from the UITP Summit in Hamburg
A cavalcade of technology and innovation that's transforming the public transit industry
Last month I had the chance to join over 10,000 people from all over the planet at the UITP Summit, an annual worldwide transit conference held this year in Hamburg.
One memorable experience was on Monday morning, walking into one of the four massive exhibition halls at the Hamburg Messe. It was full of electric buses, hydrogen buses, autonomous vehicles, subway simulators, and even a gondola car. Manufacturers had set up a showroom of the latest and greatest in public transit vehicles.
In another hall, we saw booth after booth of software providers (payments, mapping, scheduling, communications, security); digital signage and display boards; fare gates (now including facial recognition!); seating; cameras; elevators (“we strive to be the world leader in vertical mobility”); and every other component that helps make trains and buses run.
It was as much a technology show as it was a public transit show. UITP has smartly found a way to leverage technology not just to improve transit, but to encourage investment and innovation in the sector, and get business and government more excited about the future of public transit.
Some of my notes from the week:
The scale of transit in major world cities is staggering. Sao Paulo: 3.2 million passengers per day on their metro alone. Hong Kong: 5.6 million passengers per day. (OC Transpo moves about 6-million people per month.)
At that scale, there is no tolerance for downtime and a few seconds make a big difference. Hong Kong’s system runs 99% on time.
Improvements in automated train technology is allowing for shorter headways, and higher capacity. If you can have a train stop 2.5 minutes instead of every 5 minutes, you’ve doubled the capacity of your system without having to build a new track. In Hamburg, one of their new train lines is being developed to run at 100-second headways1. That’s only possible by introducing more automation and removing the chance of operator error.
A seminar inside one of the Hochbahn trains in Hamburg, where they’re aiming to achieve 100-second headways to increase passenger capacity. Everybody seems to be chasing the holy grail of driverless vehicles: trains, buses, vans, shared taxis. And everybody also seems to be figuring out that even without a person operating the vehicle, you still need a human to be on board for security and customer service.
AI was a big focus at the conference, with a range of applications on display. In France, Alstom has developed a camera system that identifies animals on TGV tracks and plays a customized sound to deter the animal, all within a few seconds. They’ve successfully reduced train-animal collisions (particularly with cows).
The world, Europe especially, is so far ahead of Canada and North America in electrification. Their governments are also very serious and ambitious about wanting to reduce emissions.
Next year’s conference is in Dubai, where they say they will be showcasing automated helicopter taxis.
Renée Amilcar was a superstar at this conference. She was acclaimed for a second term as President of UITP and I was proud to see her recognized as a champion for public transit worldwide.
Stop the presses! The star of the Summit was really Hamburg itself. A couple weeks ago I wrote about Hamburg’s ambitious move to achieve 80% of trips by sustainable modes (walking, cycling, public transit) before 2030. The event included a variety of visits and tours to check out their trains, buses, automated vehicles, bike share, and infrastructure. Very well done.
I would have liked to see more focus in the panels and seminars on “non-technological” topics like safety, accessibility, communications, even funding and advocacy. Those topics were all present, but sometimes it felt like they were overwhelmed by the technology focus.
The leading transit agencies have an “all-in” approach to mobility, integrating public transit with cycling, e-scooters, ride-sharing, electric charging, and so on. Transit stations as “mobility hubs”, not just bus stops. In Frankfurt they are adapting hundreds of train and bus stations across the city to accommodate different modes (including park-and-rides in the suburbs).
A recurring theme was “mass transit” versus “personalization”. There was a good presentation from Nazanin Moghaddam of the Department of Transport and Planning in Australia called “A tale of two trips” where they studied “common” and “uncommon” riders. Common riders are daily commuters; uncommon riders includes everybody else. It’s relatively easy to optimize a system around those daily commuters, but where transit agencies can go from good to great, is by focusing everyone else: somebody making a trip for the first time, someone with accessibility needs, kids, seniors, tourists, infrequent users, and so on.
Randy Clarke from WMATA in Washington, D.C. talked about how transit made a comeback in the city: “Run great service, communicate, non-stop.” They now sell hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise every year. Their number one communications channel is Instagram. “All the growth in our area is happening near Metro: housing and economic,” he said.
Xavier Flores, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona: “We create huge value. We cannot replace the convenience of the car. But we can help save money, be more efficient, and improve the quality of life.”
Diego Monraz, Department of Transportation, Jalsico State Government (Mexico). “In recent years, what we've done in Jalisco has been a strong commitment to comprehensive public transportation, upholding the right to mobility. The right to mobility is as basic as the right to health, education, or security.”
Headways are the interval between train departures at a station. On Canada Day after the fireworks, OC Transpo’s LRT Line 1 ran at 3-minute headways to succesfully move thousands of people home from Lebreton Flats.