Braid Station, Lougheed Towncenter, or 22nd Street… Where do you get on and off? Do you use it for work or for fun?
The Vancouver SkyTrain System had a number of people riding it during the 2010 Olympics. While statistics before the Olympics show that January 2010 had a modest ridership increase of 3.1% over the previous year, February’s ridership during the Olympics totalled 22.9 million riders – a staggering 50.7% increase over February 2009.
TransLink spokesman Drew Snider said that despite the increase in rider-generated revenues, TransLink’s budget shortfall presently prohibits the system from expanding beyond today’s capacity level, which it reached in August 2009 with the opening of the Canada Line.
But what is in TransLink’s near future? Turnstiles in transit stations by the end of this year and planned “smart cards,” which would charge transit riders based on the distances they travel by 2013. TransLink has issued a formal Request for Proposals to three pre-qualified companies to submit bids to design, install, operate and maintain the planned Smart Card and Faregate system. These three have been picked out of 10 that had responded to TransLink’s “Request for Qualifications.”
Below are the companies that were chosen to draft up some proposals:
Thales/Octopus International Projects – creator of the ‘Octopus Card’ used on Hong Kong’s transit service and supplier of similar systems in the Netherlands, Norway and Dubai.
Serco/Parkeon – who introduced a complete smart card program for Perth, Australia and have provided related systems to transit operations in Belgium, England and Dubai, as well as to the French national rail system, SNCF.
Cubic/IBM – whose systems include London’s ‘Oyster Card’ and systems for US transit agencies in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami-Dade, San Francisco plus Brisbane in Australia.
The next stage in the process was launched in June when these groups were asked to develop formal proposals based on TransLink’s specific requirements. Technical submissions are due by October 20, 2010 and financial submissions by late November. TransLink staff will make a recommendation on the preferred proponent to the board in December. The proposals received will be evaluated against qualifications, technical, and financial criteria to identify the most cost and technically effective system for TransLink. A contract, that will include operations and maintenance of the system for 10 years, could be awarded later this year with work beginning in 2011.
Funding for the Smart Card / Faregate project includes $40 million from the provincial government and $30 million from the federal government’s Build Canada Fund. TransLink will cover the remaining costs of about $100 million.
“This is a significant investment that will improve customer service and security as well as the efficiency of the transit system,” says TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis, who acknowledged the funding support from the provincial and federal governments as being critical to the ability to put the new systems in place.
“The long-term benefits are countless, particularly because the system will provide us with invaluable data that will tell us how people are using our system and where we can make adjustments that will maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the expansion we’ve put in place over the past five years,” he said. The fare charged to the card may be based on the route, distance traveled, time of day and other factors.
Awesome article. Lots of great things coming to the Vancouver transit system.