Auckland changed its Hop system to accept payment from ebit or credit cards, cellphones and smart watches. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
Auckland Councillor Andy Baker says it might be time to walk away from the national ticketing project.
Cost clouds are gathering over the $1.4 billion New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) project that would allow commuters to easily tag onto public transport anywhere nationwide.
The project has been beset by delays, and Baker, the transport committee chair, said he had discussed with Auckland Transport (AT) chief executive Dean Kimpton whether it should be scrapped.
"Do we just look at it or do we treat it like the old police INCIS thing and go, 'Well, that was a good idea... maybe not' and walk away from it."
INCIS was a $100 million police IT project that went badly wrong in the 1990s.
"Have we bitten off too much?" Baker wondered.
AT said unspecified delays were likely and "will have cost implications for Auckland", but it did not know the scale of those implications.
While NZTA fronts most of the national ticketing (NTS) costs, councils face millions in both transition costs and to keep existing systems going in the meantime.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown said he was very concerned.
"Mayor Brown supports Cr Baker's comments and is very concerned by the risk of increased costs for ratepayers as a result of this NZTA-led scheme," his office told RNZ.
Mass ticketing systems like the NTS are common in big cities, but not across whole countries.
In Wellington, the regional council said it faced a "knock-on delay" introducing the scheme because the focus was on Canterbury, after the transport agency said a trial in Christchurch was a "great success".
The Wellington programme backed Canterbury implementing the system, but "faces three significant issues that are impacting the critical path timeline", partly around getting the tech to work, transport committee notes said.
Big US transport-defence contractor Cubic was delivering the tech under a near-$500m contract, but it has previously had capacity problems and missed deadlines. Wellington was waiting for Cubic to set up a local testbed.
Transport Minister Chris Bishop said he was aware of the delays, and that NZTA, councils and Cubic were working on the core technology to enable the start of the Canterbury rollout mid-year.
"I have made my expectations clear to NZTA and they are focused on resolving the remaining challenges of the NTS with Cubic," he said. "It is complex, and it needs to be done right, but they also need to get on with it."
Every region must keep existing payments systems running in the meantime, and councils were in ongoing talks with existing suppliers.
Baker said Auckland's problem was possibly having to pay "a lot of money" to keep its HOP system going longer than expected, sinking money into a system that was "potentially not going to last". That was not recognised and there needed to be urgency, he said.
"Why are we trying, in typical New Zealand fashion, to build something that's bespoke and special" instead of using off-the-shelf tech, he asked.
"If it's not going to work and it's not going to be able to be delivered, you know, when do you actually say 'no' or 'we're going to put it on hold'?"
From the very start, more than a decade ago, NZTA has had to win over NTS doubters, especially in Auckland, official papers showed.
"End of the day, without us, it doesn't work," Baker said. "If the delays aren't our problem or our fault... they've got to make a hard call at some stage... out of fairness."
Wellington City Council talked about "national-level resource constraints that have run-on impacts" for its delivery timeline.
Mayor Brown said he wanted to be well-briefed "especially in regard to any extra costs that Auckland may face as a result of government decisions".
Auckland already changed HOP in late 2024, allowing passengers to tag on with debit or credit cards, cellphones and smart watches. Passengers had used that more than 1 million times since.
Wellington expanded an interim tag-on-and-off system for Snapper cards in 2022.
Brown said contactless payments had brought many of the benefits of NTS to Auckland already, "so any introduction of NTS in Auckland needs to have clear benefits for the public and offer value for money for ratepayers".
AT said it was working with NZTA on the incoming ticketing system and ensuring the existing contactless system worked well.
Greater Wellington Regional Council said it needed the likes of fares capping, benefit products, a back-up power solution and customer regional management requirements to be confirmed.
The NTS project aims to integrate more than a dozen different public transport systems across the country, which collect fares in different ways, into a single system, so commuters can ride any bus, train or ferry by scanning on with your phone, credit or debit card, instead of using different travel cards, like HOP or Snapper.
Waka Kotahi chief customer and service officer Sarina Pratley said the Christchurch trial was a great success, but the NTS was "running behind the latest published rollout schedule because of challenges of the more complex components of the new solution".
System testing and work was going on "to ensure we build the right solution".
"The additional time for this testing means the expected timeline for rollout to other regions, including Auckland, will be affected," Pratley said in a statement.
A new rollout schedule is due mid-year.
A previous version of this story was headlined "Auckland Council raises concerns about national ticketing project" we have updated the headline to clarify it was councillors who had concerns, not the council.
