Australia’s first driverless metro
26 May 2019 – Alstom congratulates Sydney Metro, Australia’s biggest public transport project, on opening the North West Metro and the start of revenue service, delivering Australia’s first fully automated, turn-up and go rail service.
The Metro North West Line is Stage 1 of Sydney Metro and includes 36km of track, 13 stations and a depot. The new network will provide a level of service never before seen in Australia with a train every four minutes in the peak in each direction. The project has been completed on time.
Under the contract awarded by Northwest Rapid Transit (NRT) in September 2014, Alstom has been responsible for the project management, design, supply, manufacturing, testing and commissioning of 22 x 6 car Metropolis trains and Urbalis 400 CBTC signalling systems. Alstom has also been awarded a 15 year maintenance contract for the trains, signalling, depot operations and equipment. The maintenance contract also includes the application of Alstom’s HealthHub state-of-the-art predictive maintenance tools. The HealthHub tools for the Northwest Metro include Catenary Tracer, Track Tracer, Train Tracer, broken rail detection and point machine detection.
“Alstom is very proud to have partnered with the NRT consortium and Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) to deliver our world leading metro solutions for Sydney’s North West Metro. Sydney has now joined other great cities of the world (incl. Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Singapore) that benefit every day from Alstom’s metro solutions. The fully automated driverless metro is a first for Australia and will provide a step-change for the commuters of Sydney” said Ling Fang, Senior Vice-President for Alstom in Asia-Pacific.
Designed uniquely for Sydney by Alstom in France and assembled at its centre of excellence in Sri City India, with contributions from Alstom’s operations in Australia, Brazil, China and Belgium, the Metropolis trains demonstrate Alstom’s leadership in urban mobility. Passengers have been placed at the heart of the development of this new train with the emphasis on on-board mobility and comfort.
The trains include 3 double-doors per car for improved access and passenger flows, large windows and ambient LED lighting. They will also have the highest levels of customer safety including constant CCTV monitoring, emergency intercoms and the latest way-finding aids for customer information and real time travel information. The system, equipped with Alstom’s world leading computer based train control system, Urbalis 400, minimises the time stopping at stations and the times between each service – ensuring a comfortable and reliable journey for all passengers.
The Metro line is currently being extended from Chatswood to Bankstown via the City and by 2024 Sydney will have 31 metro stations and a 66 kilometre standalone metro railway in addition to its extensive suburban rail network.
Alstom's HealthHub is a predictive maintenance tool to monitor the health of trains and infrastructure using advanced data analytics to predict their remaining useful life.
Part of HealthHub, Motes allow the measurement of acceleration during train operation sending health indicators through Option’s CloudGate LoRaWAN gateway.