Metro operators from all four corners of the globe recently visited North East England as Nexus hosted the Community of Metros (COMET) annual Western Conference. It was held at Nexus’ new headquarters at The Spark in Newcastle with knowledge and best practice shared by the attendees.
In total 17 cities were represented with 42 people attending the three-day conference. Visitors came from the USA, Portugal, Spain, Canada, Norway, France, Brazil, Japan, India, Argentina, and Taiwan.
As well as roundtable discussions, member updates, and keynote speeches from senior leaders at Nexus, there were fact finding visits to various Nexus locations. This included the Gosforth Metro Depot to see the new Stadler trains, and the Nexus Learning Centre in South Shields.
Cathy Massarella, Managing Director of Nexus, said: “We’re honoured to have hosted this COMET conference right here in our region.
“It brought together Metro operators from around the world so that we could benchmark our services and share knowledge, ideas and innovations from across the global light rail industry.
“We welcomed delegates to North East England from North America, Europe, South America, and Asia. It’s great to see how other operators are doing and what we can learn from each other.
“Nexus is proud members of the COMET group as the operator of the Tyne and Wear Metro, which cements our place in that unique club of world cities to run an urban light rail mass transit system.”
The cities represented at the conference were Buenos Aires, Washington DC, New Delhi, London, Lisbon, Madrid, Montreal, New York, Oslo, Ottawa, Paris, Rio, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Taipei, and Vancouver.