One of the funnier descriptions I heard of NZ was as “the only third world country where you can drink the water”…accordingly as our ‘premier’ city, Auckland must take a good share of the finger-pointing.

Why haven’t the individual companies done it themselves? Well I personally think they’re too concerned about “protecting their patch” to actually think about trying to grow public transport in general. Furthermore, they don’t want to have to replace all their ticketing machines as it would be really expensive. Integrated ticketing also involves a sharing of information (so that revenue can be passed back properly) that the different companies don’t want.

The PTMA (if it’s not ruined by Steven Joyce) would lead to a situation where – in Auckland at least – ARTA would decide what public transport routes and services to run and then contract them out. ARTA would pay the operator a particular amount to run the service, but all the money from fares would go to ARTA and help off-set the amount they paid NZ Bus or Ritchies or whoever to run the service. To be honest I can’t understand why the bus companies don’t love this idea – as it takes most of the risk away from them and places it onto ARTA. I suspect the reason they don’t like it is because they won’t be able to gouge ratepayers and taxpayers for subsidies anymore.

Rich, good idea. Problem is that Wellington has already gone with Snapper Card. Snapper Card is owned by Infratil who also own NZ Bus. This is incompatible with the idea of full contracting in my opinion, as it gives Infratil – rather than the Regional Council – control over the ticketing side of things. Even without the PTMA, if I were Ritchies bus company I may be a little cautious of having my competitor running the ticketing system that I’m meant to be getting paid from.

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier if we just bought one integrated ticketing system for Wellington, Auckland and anywhere else that needs one?

(Or even better, we just had free or fixed rate public transport, which would remove the need for a complex integrated ticketing system).

My own views on integrated ticketing is that while it can be good for regular comuters, for irregular ones it’s not so good.

I live in Wellington and am not a huge fan of the snapper card, as it costs money to buy, and I only use the busses occasionally when the weathers real bad. I use to buy 10 trip tickets which cost great value for money, but now pay more money at the door. If intergrated ticketing is introduced and people can no longer pay the fare to the conductor or bus driver, it could be very bad for oua visitor to the city.