Community of Metros (also called CoMET) is a system of international railway benchmarking. CoMET consists of large metro systems from around the world. The 16 members of CoMET are the Beijing Subway, Berlin U-Bahn, Guangzhou Metro, Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway, London Underground, Mexico City Metro, Madrid Metro, Moscow Metro, New York City Subway, Paris Métro, Santiago Metro, Shanghai Metro, São Paulo Metro, Taipei Metro, Singapore Mass Rapid Transit and Delhi Metro. Each metro has a volume of at least 500 million passengers annually.
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Objectives
The four main objectives of CoMET are:
- To build measures to establish metro best practice.
- To provide comparative information both for the metro board and the government.
- To introduce a system of measures for management.
- To prioritise areas for improvement.
These objectives were discussed in detail at the CoMET Annual Meeting 2016, hosted by SMRT Trains of SMRT Corporation. The meeting was held at Singapore in November 2016.
Project between London Underground and Hamburger Hochbahn
In the UITP(International Association of Public Transport) conference of 1982, London Underground and Hamburger Hochbahn (The company that operates Hamburg U-Bahn) decided to create a benchmarking exercise to compare their two railways with additional data for other 24 metro systems.
Use of KPIs
The project was successful despite the fact that metros were very different in sizes, structures and accounting practices. However, CoMET used the Key Performance Indicator(KPIs) innovatively to solve the problem.
Group of Five
In 1994, the Mass Transit Railway of Hong Kong proposed to London Underground, Berlin U-Bahn, New York City Subway and Paris Métro to form a benchmarking consortium. Thus, the metros can exchange performance data and investigate best practice amongst similar heavy metros. These five metros are later known as the Group of Five.
Community of Metros
Over time, other large transit systems joined the group. For example, Mexico City Metro, São Paulo Metro and Tokyo Metro joined in 1996. With eight members in total, the group became known as the Community of Metros (CoMET).
Creation of Nova
Following the success of the CoMET, the Nova group was created in 1998 as another benchmarking association, one between the more medium and small-scale metro systems. The Nova is currently consisted of 14 metro systems from around the world.
1999 to Present
Later, Moscow Metro joined the CoMET in 1999. Madrid Metro transferred from Nova to CoMET in 2004. Shanghai Metro joined in 2005. Santiago Metro and Beijing Subway joined in 2008. Taipei Metro was the last member to join the CoMET which also joined in 2010.