The Platform and Signalling Upgrade Program (PSUP) is a whole of rail network improvement project that includes upgrades to the current rail signalling system to enable more frequent services and extensions to the station platforms on the Midland, Fremantle and Armadale/Byford ‘heritage’ rail lines, to allow operation of longer 6-car trains. VLC undertook transport modelling and data analysis to examine current and future transport issues throughout the Perth rail network and evaluated the benefits of the proposed PSUP project in 2022. The PSUP project details are available on the DITCDC website.

 

Client requirements

The Public Transport Authority of Western Australia (PTA), appointed Veitch Lister Consulting (VLC) to provide demand modelling services for the PSUP Stage 3 Business Case. These services included the set up and model preparation of the Zenith transport model and detailed analysis of the business case forecasts. PTA adopted a two-model approach for the PSUP business case, supplementing the analysis from the WA Government model (STEM) with those from VLC’s Zenith transport model. In this context, Zenith offers advanced public transport capacity-constraint functionality, including in-vehicle over-crowding and train station constraints, in addition to a detailed travel zone system that allows public transport walk catchments to be accurately reflected.

 

Delivered outcome

VLC worked with PTA and the business case advisors, Deloitte, to represent and forecast the performance of the PSUP project across three forecast years. VLC’s detailed analysis of the base case (no project scenario) highlighted a lack of rail network capacity, restricting public transport patronage, while also leading to over-crowding for significant periods for the remaining rail passengers. The PSUP project is expected to address these issues, resulting in a significant reduction in rail over-crowding for continuing and new rail passengers, provide rail improvements in low socio-economic areas and reduced traffic congestion. VLC also generated standard Zenith transport and economic outputs that were used by Deloitte to monetise the benefits in the economic evaluation.