Helping to upgrade transport systems

Many transport operators are buying in technical expertise – deregulation and privatisation are strengthening this trend. Consultancies are benefiting as a result.

Consultancies have come a long way in the past few decades, changing as their customers have changed. Not so long ago, public transport systems in Europe were almost exclusively in the hands of public sector operators. Back then, consultancies were generally offshoots of the state operators which were set up to advise cities in less developed parts of the world on ways in which to upgrade their public transport systems.

Nowadays, the public transport scene in Europe is characterised by diversity. The old state-owned monopolies persist in some cities. But in others, new forms of service provision have come in, from franchising of operations, to Design, Build, Own and Maintain contracts for new projects, and Public Private Partnerships for whole transit systems. The old-established consultancies have adapted to this new world, while new consultancies have sprung up to take advantage of the opportunities thrown up by the present industry structure.

An example of a long established consultancy associated with a state operator would be DE-Consult, which was set up in 1966 as a company of independent engineering consultants with the mission of providing specialist support to railway operators throughout the world on questions relating to transport using rail-guided systems. Its founders and proprietors – Deutsche Bahn AG and Deutsche Bank AG – had set themselves the objective of combining the technological know-how and technical operating experience of a railway operator, plus the financial know-how of a major bank, with the most modern methods available for transport planning and transport economics. DE-Consult’s experts are now making contributions throughout the world as independent experts/assessors, transport planners, trainers, financial and administrative experts and also as general planners for the implementation of large-scale projects. In Germany, the company has also continued to develop since the 1970s, as planning and consultant engineers offering a complete range of services for rail-guided transport.

In 1994, in parallel to the merger of the two railways in Germany following reunification of the country, DE-Consult merged with EVDR Bahn-Consult GmbH, one of the leading German planners of railway infrastructures, and Transportconsult International Berlin GmbH, a provider of transport services with international activities in transport planning, economics and logistics.

In the period of more than 30 years since its foundation, DE-Consult has handled projects for public and private clients in more than 80 countries. In Germany, it has participated in key long distance rail infrastructure projects, including high speed railway lines, as well as in regional and local transport.

Reunification of Germany presented DE-Consult with many opportunities as efforts were made to bring the public transport in the eastern side of the country up to the standards found in the west. For example, DE-Consult began work with S-Bahn Berlin GmbH almost as soon as the Wall was broken down in 1989. Issues on which the consultancy has advised include reintroduction of services on the northern and southern inner ring sections of the Berlin S-Bahn, remediation of the S-Bahn bridges over the river Spree in Berlin-Treptow and extension of Line S25 Lichterfelde Ost-Lichterfelde Süd.

DE-Consult works in the light rail and bus fields too. For example, for the tramway in the city of Cottbus, the consultancy advised on the rearrangement, upgrading and renewal of approximately 4km of existing track work with different types of superstructure: slabtrack, transverse-sleeper track and lawn-filled track. Other work in this project involved the creation of new tram stops with a service and customer focus, and the dovetailing of planning and execution activities in order to reduce the duration of the project as a whole.

As an example of a bus-focussed project, DE-Consult worked for ZVON (Zweckverband Verkehrsverbund Oberlausitz-Niederschlesien, a special-purpose association for local public transport in Upper Lusatia and Lower Silesia) on the creation of an integrated local public transport network for the Görlitz–Zittau corridor. The work involved investigation and simulation of individual operational scenarios for the interlinking of the transport carriers, optimisation of bus routes as feeder and distribution services, and enhancing the attractiveness of local rail services along the Neisse Valley route.

While DE-Consult picked up considerable amounts of work at home following the reunification of Germany, some of the long-established European consultancies are continuing to focus on projects in further flung parts of the globe. For example Transurb of Belgium, which is owned jointly by the Brussels city transport operator STIB and Belgian state railway SNCB in association with private sector interests, has offices in Gabon, Argentina and Malaysia to advise on urban transport issues. Transurb played a role in establishing light rail in Manila in the Philippines.

City-based consultancies

Some city-based transport authorities have set up consultancy arms. For example, Semaly is a consultancy established in 1968 as a public corporation by Lyon’s local authorities. The consultancy successfully carried out all of the conceptual design and construction management of the metro for the conurbation of Lyon, in its extended role of owner representative, designer and construction manager. Following this, Semaly worked on a number of urban transport and railway projects conducted both in France and abroad; the firm was privatised in 1992. The French transport engineering company Groupe Egis is now the major shareholder, along with the international consultancy Bechtel. SNCF (French Railways) holds a 1% stake in the company.

This French firm now specialises in the design, procurement and construction management of mass transit systems such as metros, light rail transit tramways, guided bus and railway networks. It has of course undertaken extensive work on Lyon’s metro and light rail systems, but has also spread its net wider. For example, for Toulouse Semaly has worked on a network of dedicated right of way bus lanes, right through from feasibility to landscaping, operating issues and design of bus stops.

The light rail system in the Irish capital Dublin would be an example of a project the firm has worked on outside France. Here, Semaly was responsible for the technical design of the first two lines of the network (except the rolling stock). The Lyon firm worked on feasibility studies and the preliminary design of the project (including the reorganisation of the bus network). It also consulted with sub-contractors and assisted CIE (Irish Rail) in relations with the government and advised on the choice of rolling stock (which was provided by another French firm, Alstom).

Tram-trains

Some cities have become world famous for innovations they have introduced in urban transport and their consultancy arms have traded on this. A classic example would be Karlsruhe, which introduced the pathbreaking idea of tram-trains in the 1980s. The concept involves use of city centre tram lines to reach the shopping streets, along with heavy rail lines to serve outlying communities. This exploits the advantages of both heavy and light rail working, using each mode as appropriate, but faces some challenges regarding crashworthiness where light rail vehicles are sharing tracks with heavy freight and passenger trains. Karlsruhe successfully resolved these issues and the idea of track sharing has since spread to Saarbrücken, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and other cities.

Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft mbH (AVG), the regional transport company of Karlsruhe, built on the city’s reputation by setting up TransportTechnologie-Consult Karlsruhe GmbH (TTK) with PTV AG, the largest independent German consultancy and software firm in the transport sector. TTK now has 27 members of staff and an annual turnover of more than €2.7 million.

Projects which TTK has worked on involving the tram-train idea include advice for Italferr of Rome on the integration of heavy and light rail in the city of Palermo, Sicily. Similarly, TTK worked with the British consultancy AEA on a proposal to replace the existing branch railway to Bute Street, in the Welsh capital, Cardiff, with a diesel light rail system. In another tie-up with a British company, last year TTK established a four year framework agreement with London Bus Services Ltd to advise on tram operation.

British consultancies

The deregulation and privatisation of the public transport system has gone further in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, and this led to fast expansion of transport consultancies in the 1990s. The fragmentation of the monolithic public sector operators – for example British Rail was broken into about 100 constituent companies – meant that many of the new private sector companies were too small to have all the expertise they required in-house, so they turned to consultancies to provide it. The expertise within British Rail was sold off: Transmark, BR’s consultancy for overseas work, went to the long-established Halcrow consultancy, while AEA, a firm with roots in the nuclear sector, bought BR Research. Experienced traction and rolling stock engineers were allocated between three firms which were sold off: two of these are now part of big firms (WS Atkins and AEA), while the third, Interfleet Technology, remains independent.

As well as buying parts of BR, AEA also bought the Dutch rail research centre and is now a major force in consultancy, with 2,880 employees and an annual turnover of £250 million.

While privatisation has provided rich pickings for the British consultancy firms at home, the language advantage has helped them in obtaining overseas jobs. For example, Mott MacDonald managed construction of a 10km extension of the Los Angeles Metro Red Line, to North Hollywood. This route connects downtown LA with suburbs in the San Fernando valley and includes the first tunnels through the seismically-active Santa Monica mountains. The extension features new underground stations at Hollywood Boulevard and Universal Studios. The US $1.3 billion project was completed within budget and six months ahead of programme.

Becoming players

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link now under construction between London and the Channel Tunnel, is not being built by a large state corporation but by a company set up for the purpose, Union Railways (a subsidiary of London & Continental Railways). Rail Link Engineering, a consortium of Ove Arup, Bechtel, Halcrow and the French consultancy Systra, is responsible for the procurement, design, construction and project management of the route, a much bigger role than consultancies have traditionally played.

Privatisation of public transport activity in the UK has advanced to the point where the consultancies do not just advise on projects, they take equity stakes in them as well. WS Atkins’ shareholding in the Metronet consortium, responsible for upgrading the infrastructure on two thirds of the London Underground under the Public-Private Partnership programme, underlines the point (as does Bechtel’s shareholding in the other LU PPP consortium, Tube Lines). The LU PPP is a truly massive project: consider that Metronet is investing £7 billion in the first 7.5 years of the programme, and similar sums will be invested over the rest of the 30 year term of the PPP. To have consulting firms with fingers in pies of this size shows that consultancy has truly come of age.