Inter-regional bickering and technology constraints have held it back, but commuters are in line to receive a public transport ticketing system that makes sense.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
It's been more than a decade in the making, but New Zealand is finally set to have a single payment system across all public transport.
Whether you travel by bus, train or ferry, or live in Auckland, Christchurch or Hawke's Bay, once the system is in place, commuters will be able to pay for their trips using contactless debit or credit cards, digital payment methods like Google Pay or Apple Pay, or a pre-paid transport card that works anywhere.
"It's a great step forward for people who use public transport in different centres around the country," says Todd Niall, Stuff's senior Auckland affairs journalist.
"It's a slightly different kind of step forward, depending on where you are in those centres."
Unveiling the $1.3 billion system last month, Transport Minister Michael Wood called it one of the most significant announcements for the future of public transport for many years.
These sorts of systems are commonplace overseas - why has it taken New Zealand, with its population of just five million, so long?
Niall's been taking public transport in Auckland for decades and says there have been vast improvements to the system to make it much more user-friendly.
"In terms of the payment system, one of the really good things that's happened in Auckland over the past decade is the evolution of this electronic AT Hop payment system.
"From where I live now, I can take a bus to the ferry, the ferry to town, and then off the ferry [to] another bus to my workplace. That's effectively three different trips and the payment system will calculate all that; it gives you a free bus trip on either end of your ferry trip, it measures the whole thing as a single journey, rather than adding up the three separate components.
"It really is a much better system than it was a decade ago."
Before the AT Hop card came into being, Niall says it was a "very bitsy, frustrating" payment system, with - for example - different bus operators having different payment cards, or commuters needing to have cash for some trips.
Work started on the current payment system a decade ago and Niall says it was meant to be the basis of a national system - but he explains to The Detail that for a number of reasons that didn't eventuate.
As a result, other cities developed their own systems, with varying degrees of success, while further development of the AT Hop card stalled amid continued efforts to get a national ticketing system across the line.
Dominion Post reporter Erin Gourley says in Wellington, there are different ticketing systems across the city's buses, trains and ferries. The Snapper card, which is used on the bus network, is being progressively rolled out to different train lines, where paper tickets are still clipped by train staff. There's another paper ticketing system for ferries.
She tells The Detail Wellingtonians are pretty pleased about the prospect of a national, integrated system.
"I think honestly people at this point are glad about it, I think a lot of people are wondering why we don't have integrated ticketing at this point and why it has taken such a long time. It's the kind of thing you would expect the capital city to have figured out before 2022."
The national public transport ticketing system will be rolled out in stages from 2024.
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