The integrated ticketing system designed to make Auckland’s public transport seamless is closer to a green light after the NZ Transport Agency completed a review of funding requirements. The NZTA’s board will make its final decision next month, with the outcome likely to help appease city councillors deprived of a funding source when the regional fuel tax was scrapped.
Leading critic Mike Lee, chairman of the Auckland Regional Council, is backing a cut-price version of the ticketing system, originally priced at $80m, which the NZTA in theory will fund to the tune of 60%. The big question is whether the city’s swept up urban rail network will be ready for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, an event so important to the economy that the Govt is shelling out $20m towards purchasing Queens Wharf from the port company.

The electrification of Auckland’s rail network is the other unresolved leg of the city’s public transport policy, with Transport Minister Steven Joyce having tasked officials with studying alternate funding options including Public Private Partnerships. Again, city councillors have chided the Govt for dragging out the decision making process.

Joyce says the Govt isn’t intent on slowing the upgrade of Auckland’s commuter rail services. “People are trying to detect a lack of resolve and there’s no lack of resolve.” Still, the tepid pace of progress means companies hoping to win a piece of the development are lined up on the sidelines including France’s electronics giant Thales SA, and Wellington-based Infratil, which is expanding its Snapper card system in the capital. In Infratil’s favour is the NZTA’s consideration of whether Auckland’s ticket system should be able to be rolled out nationwide.

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