The Railway and Transport Strategy Centre (RTSC) has recently attracted funding from the international public transport industry.

The funding will enable the RTSC, which is within the Centre for Transport Studies, to lead two new collaborative research programmes in Mainline Rail and Light Rail operations.   

The initiatives will provide £300k of additional annual funding to the RTSC in their first year and are expected to grow beyond £500k per annum in future phases, increasing the number of such groups run by the RTSC from five to seven.

The kick-off meeting of the International Mainline Rail Benchmarking Group (IMRBG) was held at Imperial College in January 2016. The initial funding members are the state railways of New South Wales (Australia), Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway and Denmark.

The kick-off meeting of 'GOAL', a group of North American light rail systems, was held in February 2016 in Salt Lake City (Utah, USA). This group currently comprises ten light rail agencies within the USA and Canada, including the cities of Seattle, Toronto and Dallas.

Both groups are based on RTSC's established framework for benchmarking and collaborative research, operating on an annual recurring cycle. Research objectives include the development of new benchmarking methodologies for mainline and light rail operations and performance improvement in areas such as customer experience, safety and cost efficiency. At the request of a number of Australian rail systems, the RTSC has also started a separate project to develop rail infrastructure asset management benchmarking.