Breaking barriers: Wrapping up the UITP urban rail Seminar

UITP India’s 4th Urban Rail Seminar was a success for the sector.

Held over four days, the event was hosted in partnership with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC) with lead sponsor Ducab, session sponsors KfW IPEX-Bank, KFW and Hitachi Rail, and media partners Rail Analysis India and Urban Transport News.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the seminar was conducted online. But in fact this only served to break barriers and enhance the national and global reach never seen before by this regional event. The regional seminar attracted worldwide recognition with participation from 36 countries, more than 115 companies and over 380 registrations with 39% registrations from outside India.

It witnessed key national and international speakers sharing their knowledge and experiences on various topics, namely the impact of COVID-19 on the urban rail sector and the road to recovery, technological innovations due to the pandemic, new financing and governance approaches, and digitalisation in urban rail.

A key highlight was the 61% female speaker representation in the technical sessions.

A great beginning to the inaugural seminar came with opening remarks from our very own Mohamed Mezghani*, Secretary General at UITP, along with Dr Mangu Singh, Managing Director of DMRC who both highlighted the importance of safety and innovation in public transport. Shri Jaideep, Officer on Special Duty (Urban Transport) at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) gave an insightful keynote speech highlighting the government’s initiatives and policies for public transport infrastructure. Lastly, Mr K K Saberwal, Director Finance at DMRC gave the final vote of thanks.

The plenary session which was an interactive talk amongst CXOs from Chennai Metro Rail, Sidney Trains, SMRT Singapore and L&T Metro Hyderabad on the impact of COVID-19 on public transport in their cities. The discussion focused on aspects of ridership returning to pre-COVID levels, actions to better manage the pandemic, ensuring safety of employees and passengers, and long-term technological changes that were adopted due to the pandemic.

The subsequent days hosted technical sessions on three major aspects in urban rail:  The technological innovations due to pandemic, financing and governance approaches and digitalisation.

Leaders from cities and organisations around the world came together on a single platform to share their experiences.

The first technical session witnessed solutions such as deriving innovative, cost effective disinfection methods for rail travel; using time differential fare system for reducing peak hour rush; and using data driven approach for planning public transport demand management and included speakers from Light Rail Manila, Chennai Metro Rail, Moscow Metro, Transdev and UITP.

The second technical session included experiences from Transport for London, KfW IPEX Bank, Mahametro, Addax and Nossaman LLP were discussed on the major financing and governance approaches. Discussions included innovative ways of increasing non fare revenue, ridership risks in financing urban rail projects, Latin American business models in urban rail, and the contracting techniques used for fleet procurement.

On the last day we heard from cities about digitalisation, including predictive maintenance, artificial intelligence, new age maintenance techniques and mobility solutions. Speakers came from Delhi Metro Rail, Ducab, TMB Barcelona, Hitachi Rail. East Japan Railway rounded off the session by sharing their experiences and lessons learned from digitalisation.

While COVID-19 has dramatically impacted public transport ridership across the world, the message from everyone was clear: Rail remains a sustainable, safe and affordable form of transport for billions of people.  The continuous advancements from the sector will play a significant role in the sustainable recovery from the pandemic and serve to strengthen public transport as the backbone of urban mobility.

We would like to thank our sponsors, partners, speakers and attendees who made the digital event such a success.

Check out the full seminar Report

Presentations and recording of the seminar can be found in MyLibrary (members only)

Let’s continue the discussion on the future of urban mobility! Join our webinar “The impact of COVID-19 on innovation for urban mobility”

Register here

*Acting on behalf of Mohamed Mezghani SARL