13 years of waiting for promised national public transport card

Plans first raised 13 years ago for a single national smartcard to pay for all public transport won't be completed until 2026. What happened? 

When Snapper announced plans to launch into the wider Wellington region in 2007, transport officials were in talks with Auckland authorities about linking up to build a smartcard system together that could be rolled out to every train and bus across the entire country. 

Anywhere you went nationwide, you could hop any ride you wanted and pay with a simple scan of the same card. It would put New Zealand on the level of global cities like London and Hong Kong, with a streamlined system that would save time and eliminate the need for outdated paper tickets. 

The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) jumped on board in 2009, enthusiastically committing to a "core centralised system" that would let transport services around the country tap into the same payment system.

Thirteen years later, Wellington commuters still use paper tickets for trains and ferries. 

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* Wellington to get one ticketing system for all bus services

The original plan in 2009 was for NZTA to pay 51 per cent of the cost of developing Auckland's AT HOP smartcard, plus $30 million for a central management hub. That system would then would expand into Wellington, followed by the rest of the country. 

AT HOP cards went live for trains in 2012 and onto buses and ferries by 2014. The schedule would have had Wellington adopt the HOP card in 2015, with a full rollout to trains and ferries by 2018. 

But when NZTA went to the Greater Wellington Regional Council in 2015 to get them to adopt the system, the council balked. 

Greater Wellington raised concerns that the technology was already outdated. Both AT HOP and Snapper are top-up cards, which even in 2015 were already falling out of fashion internationally. 

Forced to go back to the drawing board, NZTA came back with an "open loop" concept that would be linked to an account, rather than a physical card. 

It would let commuters pay via contactless credit/debit cards, a mobile app linked to a bank account, or with a traditional card. The system would be similar to the Oyster Card, which has been used in London since 2011.

One of the major benefits is that tourists are able to access public transport using a regular bank card, without have to set up a special local bus card. 

That plan, dubbed Project NEXT, has been stuck in development since 2016. 

Until it is completed, no changes are expected to paper-based train and ferry tickets in Wellington. 

Metlink still officially considers Snapper to be an interim solution as they wait for Project NEXT.

Project NEXT was held up by the need to prioritise Bee Card, an interim top-up smartcard recently launched in nine regions, which itself was delivered 18 months behind schedule. 

A scathing consultant's report in October largely blamed NZTA for the delays, citing "unfocused" leadership.

"To be honest, we have tended to drop the ball," NZTA operations manager Charles Ronaldson admitted. "We weren't driving it as much as we should have been." 

The contract to supply the software and services to run the national smartcard is set to go out in March or April. 

Snapper is expected to be a major contender for the contract, along with French-based Thales, which operated the AT HOP card, and German company INIT, which provided the Bee Card infrastructure. 

Trains in Wellington would be the first to adopt the new card, before rolling out to the rest of the country. 

The initially announced launch date of 2021 is now more likely to be in early 2022.

A full national rollout won't be possible until 2026, when Auckland's AT HOP contract expires.