A review into the beleaguered $1.3 billion national public transport ticketing project has resulted in a “wide range of recommendations,” but remains under wraps for now.
A spokesperson for Transport Minister Chris Bishop said yesterday afternoon that he hadn’t yet received a copy of the report or a promised plan to deliver the project.
An NZTA spokesperson said the independent review carried out by LEK Consulting “includes a wide range of recommendations which require careful consideration to understand their implications and feasibility”.
“We will share further information on the report and the revised rollout plan in late August, following the next meeting of the national ticketing solution governance board.”
The transport agency did not reveal the costs of the inquiry when asked, and Bishop said the release of the report into the National Ticketing Solution (NTS) would take place in “due course in accordance with commercial confidentiality”.
Cubic — the key American contractor involved in developing the system — has previously faced capacity problems in the project, RNZ reported.
The Motu Move system was intended to allow seamless travel across the country on all public transport providers using a prepaid card or contactless bank cards.
In June, Bishop said he expected a copy of the report and a “plan to deliver the project” by the end of last month. The minister said yesterday that he “haven’t got either yet and I’m looking forward to reading them”.
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$1.3bn Motu Move system under scrutiny after delays
The Transport Minister has previously expressed frustration with the project’s progress, telling a Parliamentary select committee in June that he was “worried and frustrated”.
“No options are off the table in terms of anything we need to do to bring the project back on track. It has suffered repeated delays,” he said.
Bishop acknowledged to MPs that the concepts of the system had been in development since 2009 — 16 years ago.
He said ongoing issues included complex fare discount structures between different council areas and the need for consensus at the governance level of the programme.
“The governance group, the way it’s structured, is: Unless everyone agrees, nothing moves forward,” the minister told MPs.
The review was commissioned earlier this year after the project suffered repeated delays, with the original 2024 launch date in Timaru pushed back multiple times.
Later, NZTA announced in May that testing of “complex components” would prevent a delayed planned mid-year rollout, marking the third delay for the project since 2024.
At the time, the transport agency said it was “exploring alternative delivery approaches for Canterbury to implement Motu Move features in phases”.
Political lobby group the Taxpayers Union called for the system to be scrapped in June.
There remained no firm launch date for the system.
Leadership for the project received changes in June, with NZTA creating a new programme director role and hiring Roger Jones, a former chief technology officer at Auckland Transport, to fill it.
