The mass transit railway (MTR) is a major public transport network serving Hong Kong operated by MTR Corporation Limited (MTRCL). It is one of the most profitable metro systems and was ranked the number one in the world by CNN in 2017. MTRCL also runs metro systems in large cities worldwide, including London, Stockholm, Melbourne, Beijing, Shenzhen, etc. This is a partnership project between Hong Kong MTR and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started in January 2013 with near capacity operations informed by big transit data analytics as its central theme.
I contributed to the extension of project phase II started in 2016 and co-managed the project by leading the MTR research team at MIT Transit Lab and knowledge transfer to MTR. Through this partnership, MTR used the Transit Lab’s vast expertise to develop solutions that support MTR’s growth and ability to provide innovative services to its customers. The broad goal was to gain a better understanding of how the MTR system operates at “near capacity” and investigate means of dealing with capacity constraints more effectively, mitigating the impacts. Data from various sources, supported by appropriate models, are used to provide insights into system operations taking a customer-centric view.