Northern Gateway collection woes fixed

Automatic payments will start today. Photo / Martin Sykes

Transport Agency computer engineers hope to fully restore toll collection facilities on Auckland's Northern Gateway toll road today after a week-long interruption to their troubled system.

The agency was forced a week ago to suspend automatic top-up toll payments into the system after refunding $45,000 to more than 20,000 motorists for whom unauthorised duplicate payments were drawn from credit cards or bank accounts.

That followed what it said was a separate failure the previous week, when 424 road users where overcharged about $200,000 through multiple unapproved top-ups.

Agency spokesman Andy Knackstedt said yesterday that changes had been made to the system aimed at preventing more than one top-up transaction each day for any particular account, but these had to be subjected to extensive testing before being offered to the public.

The tests were "going well" and the agency expected to start reactivating the automatic top-up facility today.

Puhoi residents such as Jude Brentnall, who was shocked to find that $420 was withdrawn from her bank account before being refunded the week before last, are becoming increasing agitated over the toll collection system's unreliability. "It's infuriating for everyone in Puhoi," she said.

She was considering complaining to the Auditor-General, given the poor performance of the computer system chosen by the agency, starting with a security flaw which let 980 motorists send banking details across an unencrypted internet link before the road opened in January.

Fellow Puhoi resident Larry Mitchell, who works as a local government and financial policy analyst, questioned the rigour of pre-implementation testing.

"We've got a Rolls-Royce road with a'56 Holden IT system linked to it apparently," he said.

"Where were the auditors, what did they do, what did they miss? There are some major systems concerns where the public need to have their minds put at rest, so we don't have to check our credit card statements every month."

Mr Knackstedt said the system was tested fully against set specifications, but the account top-up problems were because of a data corruption error.