TfL prises £30m savings out of new Oyster deal

Cubic takes over running of Oyster card network

The cost of running London's Oyster card system has been reduced by £30m as part of a new deal to run the public transport ticketing network.

Under the new deal, Cubic Transportation Systems will run the Oyster card ticket gates and back-end computer systems for Transport for London (TfL) until 2015.

A TfL spokeswoman said the new contract with Cubic will cost £10m less each year than the previous contract with the TranSys consortium, which was made up of Cubic Transportation Systems and HP Enterprise Services.

TranSys was contracted to run the Oyster card network until 2015 but TfL terminated the deal early in order to "deliver better value for money" and "a better performance regime".

The Oyster card is used for the majority of journeys on London underground
(Photo credit: E01 via Flickr under the following Creative Commons licence)

Under the new contract, TfL will expect 98.25 per cent of the Oyster card ticket barriers to be working at any one time.

TfL has also purchased the Oyster brand from TranSys for £1m, a move that the TfL spokeswoman said would enable TfL to explore new ways of using "smartcard technologies" to enhance the brand - although could not say what these technologies might be.

Oyster cards can be used to travel on the London underground, overground, buses, trams and ferries, with 57 million journeys made using the card each week.

Oyster card technology can also be found in the Barclaycard OnePulse contactless payment credit card.