SA to join Myki, Tcard smart card ticketing party
Summary: South Australia is following NSW and Victoria down the path of cashless smart card ticketing for public transport, with AU$29 million laid out in its budget over three years to kick start the system.
South Australia is following NSW and Victoria down the path of cashless smart card ticketing for public transport, with AU$29 million laid out in its budget over three years to kick start the system.
Ticketing for the state public transport system's 812 buses, 99 trains and 15 trams will be automated by the scheme, with implementation due to begin in 2009/2010. However, it is unlikely to be operational until 2013 when a new block of funding will be approved, according to a spokesperson for the South Australian Transport Minister, Patrick Conlon.
The department has been working on specifications for the project for about a year, the spokesperson said, which should be ready in another three months, after which the tender process will begin.
The SA budget, handed down this week, showed that maintenance of the current ticketing system is increasing due to its age, with an estimated AU$1,200 to be spent per 10,000 validations in 2008/2009 — for 67.4 million journeys, that adds up to around AU$8 million.
The system is also failing to validate tickets, costing the public transport AU$500,000 a year according to the spokesperson — a cost the department hopes to recoup with the new system.
Despite plans to avoid the rising costs of the current ticketing system, the South Australian government will tread carefully as it chooses its supplier, after seeing other states battle with implementing their planned ticketing systems.
"We are obviously interested in the adventures of our colleagues interstate," the spokesperson said, adding, however, that South Australia's system will be a smaller system. "We're not talking about the volume of transit in Sydney and Melbourne."
NSW's automated ticketing system Tcard was cancelled in January after the government baulked at giving a fourth extension to ticketing company ITSL to implement the system.
The government is currently embroiled in a law suit, having filed with the Supreme Court to retrieve the around AU$90 million which it is out of pocket.
ERG Group's parent ITSL subsequently filed a counterclaim for over AU$200 million saying the termination was unlawful, and that the project did not work due to a lack of government cooperation.
Meanwhile, the Victorian smart ticketing system — Myki — looks unlikely to surface until 2012 and has suffered a cost blow-out of AU$216 million, according to Fairfax reporting last month.
Victorian Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has previously said the AU$500 million Myki ticketing system — originally due in 2007 — would be ready in 2010.
AAP contributed to this article.
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Talkback
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Who wrote this?
Is Brisbane some little dot on the map which doesn't exist, or was this story not researched?
custom builds are stupid
For Gods , just buy a copy of the HK Octopus card system and install it. It works.
While I'm raving, why do we (NSW) insist on building our own trains? Why not buy commercially successfull systems like Bombardier Transportation????
Perth anyone?
We do (did)
We are allowing the Chinese to build the frames for the new trains, a decision I don't like because it costs jobs here and the company chosen has never built double-deck cars before.
We've already seen what importing trains does in Victoria - trains built then imported by a supposedly reputable company, Siemens, had faulty brakes from almost the word go and the Vics had to revert to trains they imported from Japan years ago.
As far as custom builds go, they aren't all failures. Sydney's current magnetic stripe tickets already do what the NSW Government wants of the contactless tickets. My weekly lets me travel on buses, trains or ferries and I can go as far as I please however many times I please in that seven day period.
Back to ticketting, I fail to see why Sydney needs a new system at all. Smart cards have been around for at least twenty years so people playing the modernisation drums have nothing to argue for. All the current reliable system needs is a bit of reprogramming to allow for the new lines that are about to open up.
Exactly what I was thinking!
$$$$$
Because they can make more money off you if you pay per kilometer.
Greedy pigs.
New Trains
Yep
Strange that Perth was not mentioned at all.
Cause
Sounds like a 'free ride' for someone, at who's expense?
Flawed technology and it will just be another fiasco.
If anything the government should be looking at mobile ticketing, it would have saved Victoria and NSW hundreds of millions, been faster to implement and easier for consumers to use.
Miki will never work and NSW will never see a working 'smart card system. Pure fantasy.
SA looks to be going down the same road.
I question whether any sane accountant could justify spending $29 million to save $500,000 a year, until they need to replace the whole lot in a few years, probably before it is even deployed.
Where are they getting these funds?.
I know of no investor who would make such a deal.