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The New South Wales government in Australia plans to spend just under AU$568 million (US$395 million) to upgrade its Opal fare payments system, including rolling out a digital Opal card and launching a mobility-as-a-service app. Transit officials in Sydney are sticking to their ambitious plans for MaaS, including likely offering a ‘Netflix for transport’ subscription plan.
It’s unclear how much of the $568 million budget allocation–set to be finalized next week–will go toward the MaaS platform and digitalization of Opal.
The New South Wales government in Australia plans to spend just under AU$568 million (US$395 million) to upgrade its Opal fare payments system, including rolling out a digital Opal card and launching a mobility-as-a-service app.
The Sydney-based government said on Friday it would begin a 12-month trial of the MaaS app, called “Opal Plus, recruiting 10,000 users. The state and the transit authority it oversees, Transport for New South Wales, had discussed plans for the MaaS trial last December, saying the app would launch in early 2022.
Rob Stokes, minister for Infrastructure, cities and active transport for the New South Wales state government, said the trial would enable “subscribers to bundle together public transport, rideshare, e-bike rental, taxi and parking.”
Stokes, speaking at a news conference Friday along with other transport officials, said building the “digital infrastructure” is just as important as building the physical infrastructure of trains, trams, buses and ferries.
“And that’s what next generation of Opal is all about; it’s about providing those transport choices right in the palm of your hand,” he said. “So much of transport is about–once you’re at the station, getting to your destination. But one of the big challenges is how do you get to the train station in the first place? That first and last mile of the journey has always been a tricky issue for policymakers to solve.”
Public transport officials in Sydney have talked about developing a MaaS platform for years, and according to Stokes, the officials still see the subscription model of bundling public transport with other mobility modes as the way to go. He called the subscription model that officials have in mind sort of a “Netflix for transport.”
Trial Terms, Subscription Plans Released
Update: Transport for NSW released its subscription plans for the Opal+ trial and other terms for the service, as it seeks to recruit users.
Those terms include a requirement that users are packing an iPhone, at least at first, with an Android-based Opal+ app coming later.
Almost all of the subscription plans are weekly and apply only to metro/train, bus, tram and, for one of the plans, ferry. The agency is basing the plans mostly on distance traveled, the number of trips users plan to take and whether customers are planning to ride during peak or off-peak hours. There is one plan that allows users to travel an unlimited number of kilometers and trips during either during peak or off-peak times.
To also ride on private mobility, users have to purchase “add-ons,” with such providers as Ola Cabs rideshare, Beam e-bike, Silver Top Taxi and Secure Parking. But users usually have to pay for these services in the private mobility provider’s app, not in the Opal+ app. Other micromobility providers Lime and Neuron Mobility will be added. End Update.
MaaS apps, including those offering monthly and other subscription pricing plans, have so far failed to take off globally.
Still, state Minister for Transport and Veterans David Elliott, also speaking at the press conference, said the hundreds of millions of dollars in “investment” would pay for itself over five years. Like Stokes, he said digital Opal and MaaS would make it easier for customers to plan, book and pay for various modes of transport all in one place and that, purportedly, would get residents out of their private cars.
“The current Opal system has delivered an exceptional service for nearly a decade, but it is time to take it to the next level,” Elliott said in a statement.
It’s unclear how much of the $568 million budget allocation–set to be finalized next week–will go toward the MaaS platform and digitalization of Opal.
New Procurement Planned
Transport for New South Wales introduced its closed-loop Opal card in late 2012 and completed the rollout of contactless open-loop payments on the same Opal terminals in 2019. An agency spokesperson was not immediately available to say how much of the $568 million budget, if any, will go toward replacing or upgrading the aging terminals.
Update: Transport for NSW told Mobility Payments in a statement that the agency does plan to buy new terminals.
“The upgrade will incorporate investment in new systems and infrastructure, including the rollout of new Opal readers across the network,” a spokeswoman said. “Transport for NSW will be running a number of competitive tender processes and will update the community as planning progresses. Transport for NSW is planning to commence this process in the coming months.” End update.
New South Wales Transport officials often refer to contactless open-loop payments and contactless closed-loop Opal as part of the same project, perhaps because they run on the same terminals.
U.S.-based Cubic Transportation Systems has the large Opal contract, including contactless open-loop payments. That contract is set to expire in 2024.
A release by Transport for New South Wales Friday announcing the $568 million budget allocation also said it would be “running competitive tender processes starting in the next two months.”
Howard Collins, the agency’s chief operations officer, said at the news conference that the agency would be taking a “flexible” approach with its procurement, but it’s unclear whether he was referring to the Cubic contract.
“What is great about this, the back-of-house systems that we contract out at the moment, we are renewing this,” he said. “This will give us so much more flexibility as a government and as a transport agency to manage. And we’ve talked to other players in the world, and they have seen millions and millions of dollars of savings in the long term. And this will make us more efficient, and maybe the product more able to be flexed when we need it, rather than paying huge dollars to somebody else to modify the system.”
Transport for New South Wales said it has recorded more than 4 billion trips with Opal since launching it nearly 10 years ago.
The agency last December ended a trial that put a digital Opal card into NFC wallets supporting Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, also with 10,000 users.
That trial was supposed to also test incentives for getting customers to use Opal cards to pay for trips with ride-hailing company Uber, ingogo taxis and Lime bike rentals. If the users took a ride on a Transport for New South Wales metro train, bus or other mode within 60 minutes–either before or after the private mobility trip–they would receive a credit to their Opal accounts of AU$3 (US$2.09).
But the agency cancelled this part of the digital Opal trial because of the pandemic. A spokeswoman told Mobility Payments in December that it might make this incentive part of the planned MaaS trial.
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