Transport for London dangles £1.1bn carrot in pursuit of suppliers for new revenue collection deal
- Reference: 1605105004
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/11/transport_for_london_looks_for/
- Source link:
At pre-COVID levels, TfL took in about £5bn from paying customers across the English capital every year, supporting 16 million journeys per day.
It is now looking for “possible approaches to the procurement of a new revenue collection system contract” in a market teaser otherwise known as a [1]Prior Information Notice .
As part of the new contract, the transport authority expects an overhaul of the ticketing and payment infrastructure familiar to any London-dwelling traveller. The old pneumatic powered gates, mainly found in central London, will be replaced, as will the current ticket validation readers. TfL is also looking to migrate its pre-pay RFID Oyster card system onto the same technology platform as other bankcard and phone contactless payments, and retire the related back-office legacy system.
The scope of the new deal includes ticketing systems, software package and information systems, installation services and transport services. Most of the IT-related work comes in the back office, where TfL is looking for oyster back-office systems, integration with TfL’s contactless back office system, magnetic ticketing back-office systems, payment card processing systems, system control and monitoring systems, helpdesk, and support. It is also looking for data centres, infrastructure (including server hardware and operating systems), and network design.
TfL said it wants to replace a single contract which covers back-office IT as well as 4,000 devices, including gates, validators, and ticket machines, in 280 London Underground station ticket halls; validation equipment on over 8,500 buses and at 39 tram stops; over 5,000 devices at Docklands Light Railway, TfL Rail, London Overground and National Rail Stations; 4 000 devices at retail outlets. Lastly, don’t forget the ruggedised validation devices at 23 river bus piers.
The current supplier is Cubic, which, in 2017, [2]signed a $185m three-year contract with TfL .
In 2016, Cubic signed a £15m, two-year deal for [3]contactless payments .
Although TfL is set to begin its early market engagement for the replacement deal, the formal contract tender notice is not set to be published until 2022. TfL did not reveal the expected duration of the deal.
Last year, [4]the Oyster card website was pulled offline after 1,200 accounts were accessed by miscreants using stolen customer login credentials.
In the summer of this year, the London transport body [5]awarded Capita a five-year £355m contract renewal from October 2021 to further work on the Congestion Charge's digitisation, and the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to include the inner London area bounded by the North and South Circular Roads. ®
* London is Europe's largest city by population.
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[1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:541858-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0
[2] https://www.cubic.com/news-events/news/cubic-continue-delivery-revenue-collection-services-transport-london-contract
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/13/tfl_contactless_payment_licenses/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/08/tfl_oyster_card_outage_online_topup/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/10/transport_for_london_capita_contract/
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The current contract and system by government standards seems to one very good value for money. Switching it to a new platform will end up costing hundreds of millions. No doubt Crapita will get it and then massively overrun on costs.
London?
Hm. I thought it was Moscow.
Re: London?
Its actually Istanbul, however since neither are in "Europe", 'London' is technically the largest "European" city. Mind you if Turkey ever joins the EU...
I've found HMRC are very good and incredibly skilled in screwing money out of people. Have they asked them?
Are the 'migration' costs included in those costs - I suspect not
I would expect those to be significant as, even with the logistical planning skills of Baroness Harding of Winscombe, changing from existing infrastructure at gates and on buses cannot be done in a 'big bang'. Old and new systems and tickets will have to co-exist for some months I would expect.
But then it's TfL so they could take the Westminster Bridge approach close the whole system down while they faff around with new machines and gates - who knows the new system may even be in place before the existing (unused) equipment on the Elizabeth Line comes into use.
Give it to Crapita
They will only charge £1.3Bn for the first year and £1Bn thereafter, so TFL will start to make some money in Year 3.