Modern Railways
Mastering realistic strategies of planning, designing, financing, developing, modernising, managing and operating modern rail infrastructure

The world railway industry has enjoyed a period of strong growth, partly thanks to rising demand for new infrastructure from emerging markets but also due to broader global economic growth. Factors such as high fuel costs for road and air transport, coupled with the more environmentally-friendly nature of rail transport, may prompt a change in consumer travel habits and indicates that the industry may be able to weather the current global economic downturn better than other transport sectors. With the booming of world population and rapid urbanisation, there has been an increase of demand for urban rail transits to ease the traffic issues in city centres.

The Modern Railways Conference will be a one-stop platform to discuss the future of rail infrastructure, including planning, expansion, execution, project funding models, day-to-day operations, round-the-clock maintenance, station management, civil and construction work, cutting-edge technologies of signaling, telecommunication, rolling stocks, tunneling, power and electrification, track modernisation and pertinent case studies in modern railways. Therefore, whether you are a driver or enabler towards rail infrastructure projects, you will find this highly anticipated Modern Railways Conference an excellent platform to network, exchange ideas, seek business opportunities and to tap into the experience of key industry leaders.

Dr. Somchai Sujjapongse Director-General of State Enterprise Policy Office (SEPO) Ministry of Finance, Thailand

Follow your own agenda with a choice of three streams over two days:

Stream I : Mass Rapid Transit

This stream will discuss the issues on network planning, project funding, station management, fare collection system as well as signaling and communication technologies to improve the overall reliability, availability, maintainability and safety of mass rapid transit system in an urban area with high capacity and frequency. This session will also feature some international case studies that presented by MTR Corporation about asset management. Manila Metro Rail Transit will be sharing the rail transit investment strategies and financing environment in South East Asia.

Stream II : Light Rail Transit

Light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and mass rapid transit system. This stream addresses the challenges for planning, construct and integrating light-rail system into the multimodal transportation network in a city centre.  The session will also highlight some technical issues such as advance train protection system, power and electrification for the light-rail-vehicles.

Stream III : Mainline

The Mainline of a railway is generally refers to a route between towns that connects urban and sub-urban. International case studies will be addressed by mainline operators from Indonesia,  Malaysia and India, to discuss cutting-edge issues such as track modernisation, project financing, electrification, communication-based train control and intermodal transportation in this region. This stream will also highlight the strategies to synergise the operations between freight and passenger rails. 

Staying on top with the rapid development of high speed rail, the Modern Railways Conference is also featuring an exclusive т€œHigh Speed Rail Dayт€ on 25th May 2011 to examine the challenges and solutions, cost and benefits as well as presenting international case studies on viable funding model and technological requirement to make high speed rail a reality.

For the full programme please contact Miss Esther Wong at EstherW@marcusevanskl.com