Sydney Metro Research Articles

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“Making It Happen”: Deciphering Government Branding in Light of the Sydney Building Boom

“Making It Happen”: Deciphering Government Branding in Light of the Sydney Building Boom

Public Perception of and Attitude to Driverless Train: A Case Study of Sydney, Australia

There are 32 cities around the world with automated metro systems in operation. The majority of these are located in Europe (13) and Asia (14) but none so far in Australia. However, the picture is changing in 2019 when the first stage of the ‘Sydney Metro’ starts its operation on the North West link in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The automated train is planned to be used safely without human interaction, thus reducing significantly the labour input in the provision of service. Although the proposal for a fully automated system came late in the planning phase of the Sydney Metro project, it appears that, from a technical point of view, the project is clear and well planned. However, providing information to Sydneysiders and understanding their attitudes towards automation has received no consideration. Moreover, how the public perceive these changes and their attitudes to aspects of the new system, including driverless trains, may well be crucial in properly positioning and marketing the new services to ensure the expected patronage. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating public opinion of the new Sydney Metro service by undertaking a research on people’s perceptions of a driverless train as well as their attitudes to the new transport system and public transport more generally

Development of a Numerical Weather Analysis Tool for Assessing the Precooling Potential at Any Location

Precooling a building overnight during the summer is a low cost practice that may provide significant help in decreasing energy demand and shaving peak loads in buildings. The effectiveness of precooling depends on the weather patterns at the location, however research in this field is predominantly focused in the building thermal response alone. This paper proposes an analytical tool for assessing the precooling potential through simulations from real data in a numerical weather prediction platform. Three dimensionless ratios are developed based on the meteorological analysis and the concept of degree hours that provide an understanding of the precooling potential, utilization and theoretical value. Simulations were carried out for five sites within the Sydney (Australia) metro area and it was found that they have different responses to precooling, depending on their proximity to the ocean, vegetation coverage, and urban density. These effects cannot be detected when typical meteorological year data or data from weather stations at a distance from the building were used. Results from simulations in other Australian capitals suggest that buildings in continental and temperate climates have the potential to cover substantial parts of the cooling loads with precooling, assuming appropriate infrastructure is in place.

See the Difference in a Precast Facility: Changing Mindsets with an Experiential Safety Program

AbstractThe AU$8.3 billion Sydney Metro Northwest Rail Link is Australia’s largest public transport project and includes the construction of twin 15-km tunnels. A temporary precast facility was constructed to produce the wall-linings for the tunnels. The facility is operated 24 h a day from Monday to Friday and 12 h on Saturday with 100 workers. To enhance the safety performance within the facility, an experiential learning safety program referred to as See the Difference was implemented in conjunction with other safety interventions, although the program was the glue that held all initiatives together. This paper describes the safety program and examines its effectiveness and contribution it made toward reducing incidents and engendering teamwork within the temporary precast facility. It was observed that the See the Difference program had a positive influence on changing the mindset of the workforce from a fixed one to one of growth, which was developed through a process of coaching. The paper draws on ...

Determining the Main Factors Influencing the Energy Consumption of Electric Vehicles in the Usage Phase

Electric vehicles (EV) are often considered as an environmental conscious alternative to conventional vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICEV). In order to quantitatively analyse the environmental benefits, it is essential to explore the energy consumption behaviour of EV during the usage phase. However, this information is neither available in public domain nor commercial database. Theoretically, the energy consumption of driving EV will be influenced by a number of factors, such as road conditions, traffic, etc. Thus, this paper applied Design of Experiment (DoE) method to explore the statistical significance of the selected factors. In order to simulate the real world usage phase, the Nissan LEAF was tested in Sydney metro area, and the energy consumption was collected under various conditions. The screening results define the main factors impacting the energy consumption, as well as measuring the magnitude of those impacts. As a result, a simple binary model is generated to estimate the energy consumption of EV for a specific usage condition.

Public–private contracting and incentives for public transport: Can anything be learned from the Sydney Metro experience?

The New South Wales (NSW) government created the Sydney Metro Authority to design, build and operate a completely separate underground Metro rail system to supplement the existing public transport network in Sydney. By the time the NSW government abruptly cancelled the entire Metro project in early 2010, the authority had conceived and designed a contract that was proceeding to procurement. This paper examines the nature of the proposed Sydney Metro contract in relation to its performance framework and compares this to the frameworks in current contracts for bus, rail and ferry public transport in Sydney. Against this background, the paper examines the extent to which the Sydney Metro approach has had an impact on subsequent public transport contracts in the context of the literature on public private contracting and incentives for public transport procurement. The paper concludes that little has been implemented, although the other mode contracts now enable more performance measurement and incentivisation. In particular, the decision to award contracts to existing (and mostly public sector) operators appears to have acted as a brake on developing these performance elements.

How optimal was the Sydney Metro contract?: Comparison with international best practice

The New South Wales (NSW) government created the Sydney Metro Authority to design, build and operate a completely separate underground Metro rail system to supplement the existing public transport network in Sydney. By the time the NSW government abruptly cancelled the entire Metro project in early 2010, the Authority had conceived and designed a contract that was proceeding to procurement. This paper compares the elements of the proposed Sydney Metro contract to findings of the literature on optimal contracting and optimal incentives and on PPP best practice. The paper concludes that the Metro seems to have at least implicitly drawn fairly heavily on best practices and principles, but that its ultimate failure to be implemented is an instructive lesson about how operating environment can impede integration of useful knowledge and experience.

Spatial characterisation of multi-level in-use copper and zinc stocks in Australia

A methodology has been developed to characterise the in-use stocks of copper and zinc at a variety of spatial levels. The approach employs representative concentrations of copper and zinc in their main in-use reservoirs (which account for virtually all the metal put into service) together with geographic information system (GIS) data sets of the spatial locations and densities of these reservoirs. The authors have applied this methodology to Australia at four spatial levels: central city, urban region, states/territories, and country, to produce what is believed to be the first multi-level spatial characterisations of the in-use stocks of technological materials. The results are presented quantitatively and as a series of stock density maps for Inner Sydney, Sydney Metro, all Australian states/territories, and Australia itself. The total stocks in Australia are estimated at about 4.3 Tg Cu (4.3 thousand million kg) and 3.8 Tg Zn (3.8 thousand million kg), or about 240 kg Cu/capita and 205 kg Zn/capita. A statistical analysis of the data shows that the metal stock density at a given spatial level is largely determined by a small number of high-density components at the next lower level. The spatial analysis of the in-use stocks indicates that 50% of all copper and zinc stock resides in just 10% of Australia's local government areas. The largest stocks occur in large urban regions, which can contain copper and zinc densities more than a hundred times higher than rural areas. These regions are expected to be major Australian “metal mines” in the future.