Some years ago, I was on the NZTA board, now called Waka Kotahi. One of the matters debated at the Board was the issue of boarding cards for public transport. Auckland applied for a significant sum to develop its own card to NZTA. The Board decided that we would support Auckland to develop what would then become a national card. So, when somebody hops on a bus in Christchurch, or Auckland, or any other city the card was the same.
Otherwise, there would be different cards for every place leading to massive extra costs for NZTA. It seemed to make sense.
It’s staggering that there is still a debate about cards. Infratil, whose system is used in Wellington, totally screwed the scrum when they started lobbying senior National MP’s over bar-b-ques suggesting that there should be interference with the NZTA Board as we went through a tender process with card vendors. We made a final call, and the supplier was to be a French system. I’m not sure why Maurice Williamson is now saying they may pull out of using the cards which have been decided by Waka Kotahi.
For people looking on this seems to be yet another little skirmish. However, there’s big bucks involved. This system will cost over $1b. How the hell it got to this, troubles me.
Every area which has a different ticketing system costs NZ Inc a fortune in subsidies. I guess that would not worry Auckland. They expect the rest of us to pay for whatever they want. Here’s the link to the article on Auckland, again.
Quitting new NZ-wide transport ticketing system not off the table – Auckland councillor | RNZ News
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