Dublin Smartcard – Integrated ticketing system
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Couldn’t find a topic for this, haven’t heard any news on it for a long time in fact!
The RPA have been given the responsibility to design and implement a smart card based ticketing system that will provide the ticketing platform for the different providers of public transport – so that’s Luas, both Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann, DART (and eventually DART Underground) plus Metro North.
The project was launched in 2002.. so where is it?
ALMOST €19m of taxpayers’ money has been spent since 2002 on an integrated ‘smartcard’ ticketing system that will not be fully available to commuters in Dublin until next year at the earliest.
The project to allow commuters use the same ticket or smartcard for bus, rail, and Luas was launched in 2002 but still has not come into use.
Transport minister Noel Dempsey admitted the high cost of the project in response to a Dáil question from Fine Gael’s Transport spokesman Fergus O’Dowd last week.
“Some €18.6m has been paid out by the exchequer on the integrated ticketing project since the inception of the project in 2002. This expenditure encompasses project management, design and development costs and operator contributions for the single smartcard,” the minister said.
Dempsey said that the system was being introduced on a phased basis in the greater Dublin area.
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“How it has taken the government 10 years to roll this out is a mystery. It is obvious that the transport companies have been running rings around successive Fianna Fáil transport ministers.”
In February 2008, Dempsey told the Dáil that €12.5m had been spent on the system since 2002.
The figure has risen by over €6m since then and this is compounded by the fact that the project had an original estimated cost of just €12m.
The mish-mash that is inner city Dublin transport will be fixed in part by the Interconnector, but imo this smartcard is equally important.
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smart cards not so smart… They probably building a special building to process all the private data… They will make you work harder 🙁 If you have any issues you will have to pay for the phone call…
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Finally some news..
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0308/1224265794584.html
TESTING OF the new integrated ticketing system for public transport in Dublin is to get under way within weeks, with a pilot project beginning before the summer.
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http://www.rpa.ie/en/news/Pages/ITS(SMARTCARD)SignificantContractAwardedPressRelease.aspx
RPA have released a press release 22/4/10:
“Railway Procurement Agency has announced that the contract to operate the Integrated Ticketing Scheme (ITS) has been awarded to Hewlett-Packard Ireland. “This is very strange as the last press release on this project from the RPA is September 2008, when it announced the same thing but that the contract to operate ITS was awarded to IBM Ireland.
http://www.rpa.ie/Documents/ITS%20Contract%20Awarded%20220908.pdfWhat on Earth is going on? have they just wasted the last 18 months?
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Of course! this is Ireland after all. Best thing to do would be to engage a consultant to find out if they have just wasted the last 18 months and where we can go from hereto make sure thus NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. However, I must stress this: we are where we are, moving forward, vis a vis the current economic climate.
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@ac1976 wrote:
This is very strange as the last press release on this project from the RPA is September 2008, when it announced the same thing but that the contract to operate ITS was awarded to IBM Ireland.
IBM seem suitably unimpressed and have relocated their high end server manufacture to Singapore. Its not rocket science to get a very basic swipe system; look at Octopus in Hong Kong; it can also be used with over 100 retailers such as McD’s or Seven Eleven for purchases up to about €10. The one feature of their system that I like is that from many locations you can get out of the ticket barrier controlled system if you have run out of credit but not back in; i.e. a grace period of 1 journey
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Its such a mess, just last month the RPA were telling the Irish Times that they were rolling out a pilot ITS this summer with the technology being provided by IBM, and just a month later they seem to have ended this contract and entered into a new one!
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0308/1224265794584.htmlThere must be more to this story, maybe we will find out the details then next time the Controller and Auditer General publishes his reports! Or if some keen journalist makes some FOI requests.
HP software is used for Transport For Londons Smart cards, so I guess we might end up with an Oyster-like card in the end!
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From the press releases it seems that IBM has a design/build contract while HP got the operations contract. It’s been a long time coming but it will be good when it arrives. The bus company needs to have on-street ticket machines like the luas and stop taking fares on board.
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And if you believe that 90 less buses and more restricting of the routes will improve service, then you will also believe that the bus stop route information will be rolled out in three months!
Ten years to integrate ticketing – and yes the State has owned the three major transport operators in Dublin since 1949.
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Ten years on and integrated ticketing is still just around the corner.
As a waystation, it has been announced that rail and bus commuters will, in place of one ticket, now have two – one for each system. According to RTE the rail station new access machines were having problems reading the magnetic strips!
Got to laugh, otherwise emigration to somewhere like Singapore or Hong Kong, on one integrated ticket, involving several carriers, is the only option.
How many points needed for Rocket Science.:D
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Please don’t talk about Hong Kong; it makes me want to cry thinking about Dublin when you consider the Octupus card not only lets you use all public transport by touching versus loading tickets through a reader; but the coffee in your left hand was probably paid for with the cash balance on your card.
Why can’t a deal be done with a bank to handle all transport payments on a card that can handle any puchase from participating retailers up to say €10 in the City as well?
This technology has been around for years, might it be that the various arms of CIE and the RPA who are all civil servants simply cannot be forced to do what is in the public interest?
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@PVC King wrote:
, might it be that the various arms of CIE and the RPA who are all civil servants simply cannot be forced to do what is in the public interest?
The staff of CIE or of the RPA are not civil servants.
They may be public servants, but that is a different thing altogether. Civil Servants work for Government Departments, or Offices or for the Oireachtas, not for state agencies or state sponsored bodies. -
Fair point; one group has gold plated pension provisions and inflated salaries and perform a function that the private sector have no interest in; the other group has the same benefits but perform a function that the private sector may have an interest in.
Ultimately neither group would enjoy a similar remuneration package if same were decided by the market; both groups should act in the public interest and to get back on point; CIE and the RPA should be capable of providing a single ticket that is predicted on
1. Season/Monthly/Weekly tickets being the majority ticket type
2. That is based on touching in versus loading tickets through a reader
3. That has ancillary payment options such as the OctupusI have no doubt a bank would pay for the right to run such a service; think about it you buy a season ticket in December (to avoind the annual rise) and the bank gets the use of your money to be paid to the transport company over 12 months; not like there is a shortage of bank staff around at the moment.
No intergrated ticketing almost 6 years into Transport 21 is simply unacceptable…..
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I can only agree with teh negative findins reported by others in this thread.
We need our Ministero for Transport to the public alternative to cars automated, integrated electrified and cost-effective.
Why are we still paying for fossil fuels when even the ESB are considering Hybrid Trucks [saw one being filmed the other day]?In a review of our current financial position, we looked at making some savings by using public transport instead of the car for a while.
While you get could get a card for Bus and Luas aroudn Dublin, we couldn’t find a card that gave you Bus and DART [more than happy to stand corrected on this] or any card for a halfway reasonable price.
Asking around the area some local students confirmed the dislocated rip-off, with them finding it cheaper to pay separately for everything unless they were going into Temple Bar every night of the week by bus AND not getting the Late Nite Bus home.Some savings were only possible with yearly tickets and regular use.
Going in by DART wasn’t covered and the Late Nite Bus wasn’t covered.
[sad I had to ask a student about transport to Dublin Nite Life, but there ya go]My solution in *my* student days looks appealing, even though
- I’m relatively unfit , older and even grumpier
- we live further out from the city than we did
- the wintery weather will soon be upon us
– CYCLE!
Imagine my chagrin when I went to get a bicycle tyre problem sorted out and found
- the bike had to be left in for TWO DAYS [no on-the-spot service].
- then “I’d be informed” when it was ready – by “automatic text” no less(!)
- finally, the privilege for this much reduced and comlpex service would be €26.
Bring back the days when you could get a puncture going down Rathmines Road, walk along until you found a bicycle repair shop and a man who would put on a patch
– for NOTHING!
ONQ.
PS Okay I’m gilding the lily a bit – we had to replace a “bobbly” tyre, but it was on my son’s bike fer goodness sakes – the whole bike only costs €110, and even that seemed a rip off.
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@PVC King wrote:
Please don’t talk about Hong Kong; it makes me want to cry thinking about Dublin when you consider the Octupus card not only lets you use all public transport by touching versus loading tickets through a reader; but the coffee in your left hand was probably paid for with the cash balance on your card.
Why can’t a deal be done with a bank to handle all transport payments on a card that can handle any puchase from participating retailers up to say €10 in the City as well?
This technology has been around for years, might it be that the various arms of CIE and the RPA who are all civil servants simply cannot be forced to do what is in the public interest?
I wholeheartedly agree with you… but lets not talk about getting banks involved in this mess. FFS we can’t even get visa/mastercard debit cards that will actually work online or outside of the country.
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@OisinT wrote:
I wholeheartedly agree with you… but lets not talk about getting banks involved in this mess. FFS we can’t even get visa/mastercard debit cards that will actually work online or outside of the country.
The reason I suggest banks to run it is that the competitive advantage a single bank would gain through having THE CARD of choice would ensure that they would pay a large premium; this premium should pay for a far superior ticket barrier system and reader system than what is currently in use. As funds are tight this basically raises private sector funding and a potential premium in excess of that at a time when funds are tight. A study of the Octupus experience would be a very good start….
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See this link to show how another city, Sydney, still has no integrated ticketing system after 10 years:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/nsw-ticketing-fiasco-a-winner-for-lawyers-20100223-p0ou.html
What a mess.
Apparently legal advice there concluded that the only party that could be sued if there was an accident was the transport operator in whose office the ticket was purchased, not the operator in whose vehicle (train, bus or ferry in Sydney) the accident occurred. With that constraint the operators, both public sector and private sector, were understandably not keen to get involved.
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