Transport for London dangles £1.1bn carrot in pursuit of suppliers for new revenue collection deal

Transport for London, the body responsible for public transport and infrastructure in Europe’s largest city*, is set to begin talks with suppliers over a potential £1.1bn deal for collecting money for travel. At pre-COVID levels, TfL took in about £5bn from paying customers across the English capital every year, supporting 16 …

[macjules]

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.

[Abominator]

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.

[NeilPost]

Considering TfL is effectively bankrupt... sweating the legacy assets for a further decade would seem sensible.

I never got why Oyster Tech was never “Ocado’d up”,packaged and sold on to other organisations. It seems every transport organisation across the country is doing a different/incompatible system - see Network West Midlands for example.

One single travel smart card/app across the whole UK and (all of) Ireland please. Give the job to Amazon Pay and it would probably be done right first time, on time and on budget.

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been. The system in New York is based on contactless technology licensed from TfL

[TRT]

London?

Hm. I thought it was Moscow.

[Roland6]

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...

[TRT]

Re: London?

Moscow’s in Eastern Europe. It’s not in the EU, but then neither are we now.

[Insert sadsack pun here]

Re: London?

Moscow is 12.4 million.

London is 9.3 million.

[wolfetone]

I've found HMRC are very good and incredibly skilled in screwing money out of people. Have they asked them?

[Barrie Shepherd]

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.

[Barrie Shepherd]

Ooops Wrong Bridge !

Should be Hammersmith Bridge

[Howard Sway]

So they're going to spend a billion quid

ripping out and relacing a massive system that currently works with something that.....does the same thing.

And they're complaining that they're broke at the moment too!

Whichever management team had so little to do that they had time to develop and propose this pointless idea should be told they are no longer necessary.

[ChrisB 2]

Re: So they're going to spend a billion quid

This - it does seem a bit strange. I get that things become old/outdated, but the system in place at least appears to be working reasonably well.

[s. pam]

Whoa -- wait just a damn minute

They're so broke they've & London mayor have been cap-in-hand begging the Gov for ££'s to stay afloat and now they're offering to pay £1.8B?

WTAF am I missing????

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Whoa -- wait just a damn minute

They've been told to significantly expand the congestion zone and increase their prices by a fair amount (see what I did there ?), which is likely to involve new forms of charging. Maybe they're hinting that change costs.