Rail Stations Management
Building Stations to Last: Where Connectivity Meets Community
Prioritizing the customer experience, our Rail Stations Management services focus on human-centered design and sustainability principles. DB E.C.O. North America advises clients on new and existing stations, from initial conception and design to station operations excellence.
In the design phase, we support clients in determining the optimal station layout, station sizing, operations and sustainability requirements, and platform configurations. We complete passenger movement analytics and establish efficient platform circulation conditions. Throughout the process, our team focuses on safety, cost control, environmental impact, community integration, and customer experience.
For established stations or modernization projects, DB E.C.O. North America helps clients optimize operational and organizational performance. We develop operating procedures, assess KPIs, and perform audits to improve station operations and control costs.
With a team of experienced experts, we have worked on numerous projects worldwide, creating innovative stations with seamless connectivity. Utilizing sophisticated transit-oriented planning, we integrate stations into communities, constructing self-sustaining and modern transportation hubs.
Our Services
Rail Station & Platform Planning & Design
The Challenge
Passenger rail stations are often not human centered, lack functional design, and are unsustainable and cost inefficient. Station sizing is a key component of station design, oversized stations lead to higher operation and maintenance costs while undersized stations can cause service operations disruptions.
Station design needs to meet operational requirements and environment and sustainability targets while ensuring customer safety and security are a priority. To enhance ridership growth and customer confidence in rail systems, there is a need to actively modernize station assets, and assess their suitability for operational needs.
Our Service
DB E.C.O. North America offers a wide array of services including peer review analysis of the station design, operations improvement, and customer service enhancement. We support rail infrastructure owners, operators, designers, and funding authorities to make rail stations economically viable and sustainable.
Design Layout Analysis
We support clients with peer review analysis of station layouts both for stations in the design phase or legacy stations. We provide design recommendations to modernize station buildings for optimal layout and evaluate green station standards aimed at reducing the CO2 footprint. We advise on station layout to incorporate behind the scenes technology, as well as operations facilities, amenities, and service areas for successful operations.
Passenger Movement Analysis
We review, analyze, and monitor the track-side elements such as platform configurations, arrangements, and capacities, verify safe and efficient processes such as passenger movement and crowd control, and establish efficient platform circulation conditions. We seek to create human-centered facilities and customer-focused services, while advising on architectural building features and the configuration of technical equipment.
Rail Station Urban Integration & Transit-Oriented Planning
Our objective is to provide a well-integrated transit system, accessible to all people within a community. We provide recommendations on the connectivity and accessibility of intermodal station areas, and develop, review, and assess transit-oriented opportunities within the station vicinity.
Together with the client, we reshape station areas for interoperable transportation hubs. To ensure self-sustaining facilities, we develop profitable retailing strategies and create innovative attractive stations that serve as destination features and integrated urban meeting points.
Our Experience
Our multi-disciplinary team of experts comes with extensive experience working across the globe, in the United States, Canada, Germany, Qatar, India, Spain, Israel, etc. Our team supports a variety of projects focused on station planning, improving customer experience, providing advisory for retail and ancillary revenues services, assessing pedestrian movement, modelling analysis, and developing crowd control plans.
We draw from expertise and experience of Deutsche Bahn in the entire planning and construction process from conceptual planning to the design of complex transportation hubs that allow for an intuitive travel across facilities, implementing inclusive design for all passengers, and providing seamless connectivity and easy transfer services between different modes of transportation.
Rail Station Operations Excellence
The Challenge
Stations are the critical interface between passenger experience and operational needs. Rail agencies must strike a delicate balance between customer-focused design, cost efficiency, and policy goals while facilitating robust rail service on the network. Cost efficiency and customer satisfaction are prerequisites to rail station operational excellence. Poor customer service, limited integration into the community, a disparate governance structure, and fragmented station operations lead to higher operations and maintenance costs.
Our Service
We improve the operational and organizational performance of our client’s stations. We develop station operating procedures focused on station reliability, safety, and security for passengers. To reduce maintenance costs, we perform KPI-based operational audits customized around agency goals, facility needs, and sustainability. The overarching guiding principle is the continuous monitoring and optimization of customer satisfaction in the various relevant dimensions of a station.
Our Experience
In Germany, Deutsche Bahn operates more than 5,400 stations with more than twenty million visitors per day and spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to improve or maintain high customer satisfaction. As an integrated group, we benefit from in-house operational knowledge and tailor it to the North American market. We provide consulting services to operators and rail agencies in North America and around the world for our clients to achieve superior customer satisfaction and operational excellence.
