Q-CTRL’s quantum computing is reshaping how New South Wales schedules its trains, as the state revives rail manufacturing and confronts outback decarbonisation.
Tucked down under on the East Coast of Australia is balmy New South Wales (NSW), an absolute fulcrum of innovation in the field of high-tech rail infrastructure. In addition to pilot studies and partnership in Quantum Computer-powered scheduling optimisation from Q-CTRL, the New South Wales Government is committed to reinvigorating its rail manufacturing industry, procuring replacements for the Tangara fleet, and looking ahead to the Millenium, Oscar and Waratah fleets through the 2040s and 2050s.
It will aim for a minimum 50 per cent local content target so that Australian businesses design, build and maintain new fleets. But make no mistake, in that remaining 50 per cent there is a lot of opportunity for international firms, especially if they create high-skilled jobs in the manufacturing sector for Australian workers.
Future fleet programme
“NSW had a long and proud history of rail manufacturing, and we are delivering on our commitment to revitalise the industry and create new jobs and economic opportunities,” says Camilla Drover, Transport for NSW Deputy Secretary of Infrastructure Projects and Engineering.
The Future Fleet Program ties into the Future Made In Australia policy, a more interventionist industrial framework from the Albanese government, allocating A$22.7 bn (US$15bn) over 10 years for the Net-Zero transition, value-added materials and supply chain resilience.
“We want to ensure our future fleet will stand the test of time and support local jobs and local manufacturing,” says Sydney Trains Chief Executive Matt Longland.
The NSW Government is currently conducting a comprehensive market analysis and engagement campaign, sounding out manufacturers and suppliers to identify key considerations. Continued fact-finding and industry consultation will be engaged in throughout into 2026.
“By establishing a rail manufacturing pipeline, we will start the critical work of rebuilding skills and confidence in our manufacturing capability,” says Drover.
Quantum scheduling
Q-CTRL is a high-tech innovator specialising in quantum technology. In NSW they run pilots to optimise the incredibly complex and processing heavy challenges of the transport scheduling system.
“Between both Network Rail in the UK and Transport for NSW in Australia, one of the key areas of interest is in scheduling,” says Michael Biercuk, CEO of Q-CTRL. “How do we build a timetable efficiently for trains, for buses, for any other kind of mode of transport?”
Classical computing can crunch the numbers – but it takes time.
“The problems are very heavy and when we’ve spoken to some of the private transport providers in Australia, they indicate that they have to allow up to 50 hours for a supercomputer to just come up with a schedule,” says Biercuk.
So, if you need to change schedules at anything shorter than a few days’ notice, you may find yourself in hot water. Transport systems can’t run like clockwork all the time, so the cumulative hours lost from all that scheduling chaos can be huge.
“It’s not just that there are many possibilities to sort through,” says Biercuk. “It’s that you must include something called a constraint. A simple constraint is you can’t have two trains on the same platform at the same time. It’s obvious, it’s intuitive, but mathematically codifying that and incorporating that into the calculation is really hard.”
But Quantum Computers may be much better at this sort of task than classical ones, and Q-CTRL Black Opal platform is an out-of-the-box solution to leverages Quantum Computing for algorithmic advantage in NSW.
“Now, quantum computers are good at a variety of things,” says Biercuk, “But a reasonably narrow variety of things, and it looks like one of the areas where they can give some advantage is in these kinds of combinatorial optimisation problems, that the math underlying that problem can be mapped onto a quantum computer efficiently.”
This technology is in its early days, but shows much promise with reports of 200 times improvement in algorithmic success on relevant transport-optimization problems, plus more than 99.9 per cent success on a prototype mobility as a service (MaaS) instance using a noise-aware simulation toolchain.
“Anything that gains back a little bit of computational time or delivers a little bit of advantage in say how tightly packed a schedule is, those advantages really accumulate when the problems are at large scale like an urban transport network or a highway network,” says Biercuk.
Decarbonization down under
NSW is well ahead of the curve when it comes to rollingstock electrification, with 95 per cent plus services electric or hybrid. This compares to Australia nationwide where only 11 per cent of tracks are electrified. Freight locomotives are especially dominated by diesel, with most electric trains found in urban passenger transport.
A 2025 industry tally reports 833 EMUs sets across Australia’s six electrified urban systems (Sydney Trains/Metro, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide suburban plus intercity EMUs). This paints a picture of urban centres with vast stretches of diesel-based locomotion between those electric oases. Conventional track may not be built with electric in mind, with tunnel, bridges and cuttings often lacks the clearance for overhead cables. Decarbonising those huge distances will be a major challenge as power supply, miles of overhead cable, dust, lightning, heat and geography all conspiring against electric rollingstock as we currently know it.
Finance too can be factor with freight lines often operating privately (Aurizon, Pacific National) under long term contract. It’s difficult for the administration to cajole them into expensive upgrades and they may expect compensation when it’s not in the original terms.
All this together means there is a definite call for innovative approaches that overcome these challenges, a cost-effective rail decarbonisation free of the massive maintenance, power and infrastructure demands.
NSW’s former days as a huge rail manufacturing region are set for a revival and innovation that is both fast and ambitious. It’s encouraging to see the Australian government, at both national and local level, reinvest and take a more hands-on approach to the industry. While electrification and hybridisation dominate in the urban centres, and continues to go from strength to strength, the same all-important innovation is needed for the vast deserts of the outback, and that’s one schedule that needs sticking to.
