INFRATIL HAS JUST THE TICKET
29 August 2008
JENNY KEOWN
Fresh from revolutionising ticketing on Wellington public transport, listed infrastructure investor Infratil is taking part in a $41 million Auckland Regional Transport Authority tender to create an integrated transport ticketing system for the city.
It is understood Infratil is the only local company bidding, with French electronics company Thales and another international firm.
The system will replace the existing Auckland public transport ticketing systems with an automated fare system based on smart cards.
Infratil's subsidiary, Snapper Services, has implemented smart card technology in Wellington, provided by Korea Smartcard and localised for the city.
Snapper Services chairman Paul Ridley-Smith said it hoped to win the business in Auckland and Christchurch which is also running a tender so New Zealanders could have one card for all transport modes at discounted rates in the main centres.
But Auckland's tender process is proceeding at a snail's pace. Ridley-Smith said it had been going longer than it took for Snapper Services to visit Seoul for the first time, buy the technology, customise it for Wellington, install it and go live on 222 buses and more than 50 merchants.
The New Zealand Transport Authority's national land transport programme showed that $7.2m would be spent on Auckland's smart card development by June 30 next year, out of a total cost of $41m.
The implementation of the Snapper card in Wellington had been at no cost to Wellington ratepayers and taxpayers. Multi-transport card systems were ``risky, fraught projects'', said Ridley-Smith.
Sydney, Melbourne and Manchester had tried to build their own smart card technology at huge cost and was an expensive failure.
Sydney's disastrous six-year foray into integrated transport ticketing had deteriorated into an $A200m legal stoush between the government and card contractor, ERG.
``Clearly any sensible procurement person would want to lower risk. We have pretty clearly demonstrated that we can do that, because we have done it once in New Zealand already,'' he said.
Sophisticated fare systems were expensive, and potentially more so in New Zealand than anywhere else, he said.
Korea spread its costs over about 25m transactions a day and Hong Kong more than 10m a day. ARTA would have to spread its costs over about 150,000 transactions a day.
``New Zealand could end up with something not very good or very expensive or both unless the approach is radically different,'' Ridley-Smith said.
Hong Kong's Octopus card was used for nearly all public transport in Hong Kong, and payment at stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, parking meters, car parks and service stations. Snapper Services was following this initiative and had partnered with ANZ so the card could be used for small value payments.
ARTA has said that the smart card would be delivered in 2010, but refused to comment further.
(c) 2008 The Independent Business Weekly
The Independent
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