Snapper vows to push on with bus cards for Auckland

Snapper Services vows to install smart-card ticketing machines on more than 600 Auckland buses by this time next year, despite missing out on an $87 million contract to a rival supplier.

The Infratil subsidiary said yesterday that the award of a contract to French electronics giant Thales to supply a "contact-less" electronic ticketing system common to all Auckland public buses, trains and ferries would not stop it introducing its own Snapper card.

Chief executive Miki Sziksai was confident his machines, similar to those already installed on Wellington buses run by sister company NZ Bus, would be capable of meeting standards being developed by the national Transport Agency to extend an Auckland scheme to the rest of the country.

The Auckland Regional Transport Authority, in signing a deal on Monday for $47 million of capital work and $4 million in operating costs for each of 10 years, said a Thales smart card with "base functionality" would be available for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

It said that would offer seamless trips on trains, buses and ferries, although full implementation including a dramatic simplification of fares and a roll-out through the whole region would take three years to accomplish.

Mr Sziksai said the authority's promise was too vague, and believed 300,000 Snapper cards would be in circulation before the first Thales ticket became available.

He said Snapper was confident of being able to adapt its ticketing machines to meet whatever national standards the Transport Agency decided to adopt.

But he said those standards should have been established before the agency approved the major investment involved in the Thales deal, for which it will provide a 74 per cent subsidy to Auckland for capital spending and 60 per cent for operating costs.

"That would have been the sensible thing to do - we think they've got the cart before the horse," he said.

The transport agency has promised "open" standards to allow a variety of smart cards to plug into a central clearing house, which under the Thales deal will be developed for Auckland by a subcontractor which introduced the Octopus ticket to Hong Kong in 1997.

Although Mr Sziksai was satisfied proposed national standards for this country would theoretically allow Snapper cards and ticketing machines to operate in Auckland, his company did not believe they should have to be certified by the regional transport authority.

Although the regional transport authority says all public transport operations wanting to receive subsidies from ratepayers and taxpayers will have to comply with the Thales system, Snapper is gambling on a hope that by flooding the region with Snapper cards, it will become unstoppable.