The Managing Director of Cubic Transportation Systems Australasia, Matt Cole, confirmed that the Sydney smart card ticketing project is on time and on budget.
Approaching the first anniversary of the New South Wales (NSW) government awarding the contract to the Cubic-led Pearl Consortium, Cole said the project is well on track.
“We are hard at work developing a world class smart card ticketing system for Sydney, based on the London Oyster card system, which is widely acknowledged as the world’s most established smart card system,” Cole said.
“When we were awarded the contract early last year, Cubic promised the New South Wales Government that we would deliver the project on time and on budget. A year into the job we are meeting all the milestones and timelines laid down in the contract,” he added.
The contract, awarded in May 2010, is for a four-year project, followed by ten years of full operational services. It includes two years of development and testing, followed by a progressive rollout of the new smart cards beginning in late 2012.
Sydney’s ferry fleet will be the first to get the new smart card system, followed by rail and then the bus network, with the entire system to be up and running in 2014.
Cubic is the lead company in the Pearl Consortium, which includes Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Downer EDI, Parkeon and epay.
The consortium’s expertise in smart card ticketing in Australia is unrivalled. Downer EDI and Parkeon installed and run the Perth system, and has recently installed smart cards on the entire ACT bus fleet.
Cubic installed and runs Brisbane’s go card ticketing system, which was recently named as the best in Australia by the peak industry body, the Tourism & Transport Forum (TTF).
Cubic is the world’s leading company in the smart card ticketing field, having installed systems in more than 40 cities around the globe, including London, New York, San Francisco and Brisbane.
In London, almost 35 million Oyster cards have been issued and they account for more than 9 million trips every day. Around the world more than ten billion trips are made every year using Cubic ticketing technology.
