Auckland Public Transport: Auckland ticketing may yet leave room for Snapper
December 10th, 2009
French company Thales is to roll out the Octopus smart card/electronic ticket across an integrated Auckland public transport system, while Wellington-based Infratil introduces its similar Snapper card on its NZ Bus network. The Auckland Regional Transport Authority announced the deal with Thales for $47m of capital work and 10 years worth of $4m a year operating costs for the proposed new system across buses, trains and ferries.
However the NZ Transport Agency is stumping up with 74% of those capital costs and 60% of the operating costs under a plan which envisages national electronic ticketing standards allowing compatible tickets to be developed in other cities. Thales is to supply a central clearing house for Auckland and ultimately the rest of NZ, enabling other third party operators such as Snapper to link into the same system.
Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee says the deal between ARTA and Thales is a year later than first expected and the integrated ticketing is “the fundamental piece of the jigsaw puzzle which will put Auckland’s public transport system together.”
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