The Great Tcard Debacle
The Great Tcard Debacle
March/April Edition, 2008: Smart Cards were hailed as the answer to many of Sydney’s constant transport issues, particularly when there had been successful implementations throughout the world. Indeed, when the first agreements were being inked there seemed no shortage of praise singing pundits who were well and truly sold on the virtues of such a system.
Fast forward to the present and the Sydney TCard project is a smoldering ruin with nothing but a multi-million dollar corpse to show for it. But this isn’t to say that it’s a problem with smartcards themselves, the actual technology is well proven it’s more of a case of good intentions running into the unforeseen and not adjusting.
Smart cards, otherwise known as an integrated circuit card, are pocket sized cards with an embedded circuit designed to store and transfer information. Some of the benefits of a smart card system in a public transport context include the smooth transfer process between different modes of information, faster access to transport by removing physical tickets, and well informed feedback on user habits.
At first glance the casual observer wouldn’t think there is much depth to the Sydney TCard project. After all, it functions along a similar principle to a credit card but adapted to a transport network. Looking further into the setup reveals a smart card that has to traverse and adapt to a bus, train and ferry system while at the same time generating a phenomenal amount of data.
The management of data collected is just one aspect of the very expensive TCard system which needs to be taken into account. When you consider that each TCard user is constantly creating new data entries every time they hop on a bus, the potential for problems escalates.
Unfortunately for the TCard, data management wasn’t the worst of its problems and when you’re mired knee deep in the blame game being played by the NSW Government and the vendor in charge of the project, The Public Ticketing Transport Corporation (PTTC) you’d be forgiven for thinking that the entire debacle was a public circus.
Patricia Forsythe, executive director at the Sydney Chamber of Commerce believes the problem now is that we don’t have any contracts or certainty while we also don’t have any kind of timeframe on a renewed TCard project.
“It’s going to be a long, long time before this gets going again, even if the Government was to attempt to find a new contractor, they would have to go through another lengthy selection process and this alone could drag on for years,” says Forsythe.
The NSW Government and the PTTC are currently locked up in administration and legal woes as they attempt to untangle the mess and recover as many millions as possible. At last count 24 million had been recovered, with quite a way to go. What seems inevitable is that the transport system will be taking a loss no matter how much money is recovered simply because there’s a huge amount of time and energy invested into the project and the more delays and problems that occur the longer the amount of time before Sydney sees a smart card system.
According to Forsythe, the Government says it’s entirely the contractor’s fault, when the reality would seem to be there are challenges within the NSW transport system, like the highly complex fare structure and multiple-modes of transport. These complexities are no doubt contributing to the problems being faced, and there are also unconfirmed reports of union trouble being reported.
Should the union rumors prove credible, Forsythe believes these would have to be resolved first and foremost, before any other kind of action can be taken. Whether a rebirth of the TCard project would even get to this stage is up in the air at present, the Government appears determined to move on from the controversy.
The hassles that the TCard system has created aren’t showing any signs of easing up, Forsythe explains the Government is not going to be able to go with the existing contractor and they’re indirectly connected to one of the world’s major smart card suppliers, so they’ve made it very difficult to access a company with a proven track record in the field.