Tcard: Final judgement will come in February Suzanne Tindal,...

Tcard: Final judgement will come in February
Suzanne Tindal, ZDNet Australia

16 January 2008 10:42 AM

Tags: tcard, pttc, watkins, ticketing system, sydney, minister for transport, erg, itsl

The future of the troubled Tcard scheme will finally be decided in February, according to the body overseeing the project.


A Tcard reader

Credit: Tcard
The Tcard was initially conceived as a single, integrated ticketing system for Sydney's transport network but has been beset by delays. First scheduled to go live in 2000, only limited trials have been undertaken to date.

ERG Group subsidiary ITSL, the company contracted to develop the Tcard system from 2003, failed to rollout the scheme by a November 2006 deadline and was subsequently issued an ultimatum to meet milestones or produce remedial plans showing how it intended to rollout the system -- or see the project terminated.

The Public Transport Ticketing Corporation, the organisation supervising the planned rollout of the Tcard, is now working together with the Minister for Transport, John Watkins, to decide if the project will continue.

The plans are still being reviewed, a PTTC spokesperson told ZDNet Australia, with the Corporation's board "in the process of considering whether the program [ERG] have given us is satisfactory".

The PTTC board's advice will have to go to cabinet, scheduled to happen some time in February, the spokesperson said, by which time the board will "definitely" have reached a conclusion.

With over AU$60 million in public funds already wrapped up in the system, a lot is at stake.

As the PTTC has been deliberating the issue, a trial of the card on buses in the inner west has been continuing with 106 participants. "There have been some mixed feelings," the spokesperson said of the trial, but added that users considered it a "very efficient way to travel".

Meanwhile, there have been some technical issues with the trial. Tcard readers have experienced problems registering cards as consumers entered or left buses, due to a software issue which has now reportedly been fixed: a concern for users, as failure to touch the card on a reader as they conclude their journey could lead to overcharging. Identifying such issues, the spokesperson said, is what trials are for.

Should the project continue, the next step will be extend the trial to 1000 people, the spokesperson continued, but said this would not occur before February, since contacting additional participants during the holiday period would be difficult.