Nine companies from Australia and New Zealand and five from overseas have expressed interest in bidding for work to deliver NSW's long-awaited Tcard public transport ticketing system, the first attempt at which was canned in January.
A Tcard Reader (Credit: Tcard)
Recently appointed NSW Minister for Transport, David Campbell, today released the names of fifteen companies that expressed interest in bidding for the Tcard system — the contactless card ticketing project that was expected to be supporting Sydney's public transport network by February 2010.
Amongst Australian organisations that could be selected to submit proposals to the state in early 2009 are: Citigroup Consortium; D & R Technology Consortium; e-Pay Australia; Glide Consortium; Snapper Consortium; Hampstead Consulting; Telvent Australia; Wave Team; Zheng Guang Australia Consortium; and Pearl Consortium.
International submissions came from US-based ACS Transport Solutions Inc, Germany's Scheidt & Bachmann GmbH, China's Shanghai Huateng Software Systems Consortium, Sony Corporation of Japan and Spanish Indra Sistemas, S.A. Consortium.
"In accordance with government procurement guidelines, the names and addresses of these entities must be released," Campbell said in a brief statement today.
The TCard system recently caused Campbell embarrassment in parliament, when, according to a report by Fairfax papers, he insisted Sydney could expect the new Tcard system to be operational by 2010. However, that deadline was the one that the Public Transport Ticketing Corporation (PTTC) — the state-owned corporation overseeing the project — had hoped ERG would meet shortly before its contract to build the first attempt at the system was terminated in January this year.
The PTTC has said it would assess the 15 submissions over the next three months and that it expected to release a short list those it wants proposals from in early 2009. It also expects a contract to be signed with successful bidders in the first quarter of 2010.
I'll believe it when I actually get to use - maybe it will be in my lifetime, but doubtful