‘Addressing the challenges of climate change offers a massive opportunity for light rail’ was the key theme at this year’s UK Light Rail Conference #UKLRC19, hosted in the trendy Media City area of Manchester from 23 – 24 July 2019. AssessTech were at the conference to showcase developmental competence management solutions for light rail and explain why light rail companies must give this some serious consideration. During a plenary talk on day 2, the team explained how developmental competence management is the future for light rail. This approach aims to improve driver performance, enhance visibility and confidence for light rail operators, reduce incident rates, and eliminate many of the costs associated with the light rail business.

Andy Wallace

Tram Operations Limited

The level of dynamic risk is greater on a tramway than on heavy rail. Trams operate in both segregated and mixed traffic environments, and as such, our drivers find their trams regularly surrounded by pedestrians, cars and bicycles. We use the national occupational standards to evaluate our driver performance, but we wanted to strengthen our risk controls and felt electronic competence management was the right solution for our organisation.

At the conference, Head of Operations for Greater Manchester, Alex Cropper, told the attendees that Manchester’s key focus is to reduce its carbon footprint and generate cleaner air by reducing the number of cars on the road by 10% by 2035.  As part of this solution, the city aims to improve the Metrolink within Manchester, with a key focus on improving safety and minimising incidents as part of this strategy. Currently, Metrolink are ranked within the top 5 light rail services in Europe, but the city has big plans to move this into the top 3 within the next few years.

Similarly, the Thames Gateway, which stretches from Canary Wharf in London to Southend in Essex, experiences over 50 million vehicles per year travelling on its roads. Managing Director Gordon Pratt of Thames Gateway Tramlink is focusing on offering light rail solutions to resolve these problems, as the transport infrastructure is poor and air pollution is very high.

As well as the challenges facing the cities, the conference also provided insight into some of the innovative solutions that are being offered for light rail.

We heard from UK Trams, who are focused on sharing best practices across the industry and are actively involved in proactively identifying innovative solutions for the industry on behalf of their members.  David Keay and Laura Reardon shared some insights into the work they are doing with the Heads of Safety to develop a risk model that integrates with ORR RM3 processes. This has already been rolled out on Manchester Metrolink and is now being scheduled for 8 other regions.

Industry consultant Ian Rowe shared the findings of their latest report, which looked at solutions to ‘reduce the likelihood of serious accidents due to tram drivers becoming inattentive because of fatigue or other effects’.