As the world seeks greater mobility and environmental issues become more critical, the high-speed train is set to become an increasingly attractive alternative to air travel.

The main obstacle to rapid growth is the cost of building systems that, in well-developed countries, can cost $100 million per kilometre. The basic principles of the high-speed train have not changed since the Japanese Shinkansen was conceived in the 1950s, and it is these principles that drive the cost.

As engineers, we need to start with a commercially viable cost and find a solution that fits.

In this presentation, Andrew Lezala will describe the problem, the cost drivers and the affordable cost before proposing a solution that meets the cost target.

About the Speaker

As a business leader and engineer with 35 years of experience in the rail industry, Andrew started his career as a British Railways engineering graduate and spent 10 years in vehicle design, project engineering and maintenance.

Andrew has been President of Daimler Chrysler’s worldwide metro business, CEO of Jarvis Rail and Metronet, and President of Bombardier Transportation’s worldwide Services Division. Andrew was based in Beijing for four years with ABB before being appointed to lead what is now Bombardier Australia.

After a 10-year absence from Australia, Andrew returned to Melbourne as the first CEO of Metro, a purpose-built private-sector consortium appointed by the Victorian Government to operate and grow Melbourne’s metropolitan railway system.

Within the first three years of Metro’s operation, more than 1500 services per week were added to the schedule, 45 new six-carriage trains commissioned and around $2 billion invested in infrastructure maintenance and renewal, train reliability projects and major capital works.

On-time performance has risen 5% to 92% and customer satisfaction has reached a 5-year high. Over the past year, the number of customers using Metro has increased by 8.5%, which means that Metro is growing more than twice as fast as any other railway in Australia.