An expensive trial

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

The Taxpayers’ Union can reveal through an Official Information Act request that spending on a National Ticketing System for buses has so far cost $146.4 million (of a $1.338 billion budget over 14 years). NZTA first agreed to the project in 2009, and funding was approved for a business case in 2018.

Of the costs, $527.8 million is for design and build of the system, and further $800 million for operational costs.

Rhys Hurley, Taxpayers’ Union Investigations Coordinator said:

“16 years after the project was first agreed to, all we have is a Christchurch pilot and a local rollout in Timaru already facing problems. This project is the poster-child for how government bureaucracy bloats projects into expensive, inefficient nightmares.”

“The rest of the world manages ticketing systems fine – so why in New Zealand does it take more than a decade and a half, and hundreds of millions of dollars, before we even get to the system rolling out?”

This does seem a lot of money and time for little.

There are some excellent ticketing systems around the world. Oyster in London, Octopus in Hong Kong etc. We should just use an existing system, rather than spend a decade creating our own.