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Mar
26
Dodgy tendering – welcome to the Victorian public transport system
Filed Under Australian Politics, State Government
Lynne Kosky has admitted that the new Victorian ticketing system project “Myki” will run approximately three years late and have a budget blow-out of more than 300% compared to early estimates.
So what went wrong? I think the Victorian citizens deserve a proper investigation into this.
The Auditor-General Des Pearson has just appeared before the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee giving evidence and a report which apparently greatly differs from a leaked report which was obtained by Fairfax Media.
The company that was awarded the tender was Kamco, a consortium lead by US firm Keane in which the tender was granted in a very clouded process due to probity issues, conflicts of interest, and backdating of reports.
Of course it’s far too late to pull out of this project but it does bring into question the value of placing the public transport system in private hands. In recent years we’ve seen the privately held contracts being propped up by funds from the Victorian government. Take this into count with other public-private-partnerships (PPP) and you can see that this is just wealthy companies taking money straight out of the pockets of tax payers.
Ticket system runs three years late | The Age
As a transport enthusiast, I always knew that myki would come late. Nothing in Australia, let alone Victoria is developed ontime when it comes to public projects. Except where it concerns roads.
The backing behind the KAMCO group (part of which is Keane and ERG group) is that it came on the faith that Keane did the background work for the initial tender requirements and knew what it would be doing, and that ERG, already running the Metcard system thru the Onelink Consortium, would be able to give its input and do civil engineering world quickly. This has turned out true, all the essential public infrastructure work has been complete. The backing plates and ticketing stands are all over Victoria.
It certainly doesn’t help that this system cover the entirety of Victoria. Such a system has not been completed before and cannot be bought off the shelf.
As well as that, Keane has just been bought out by an Indian company. You know how Indians work right? Lazy pathetic, no matter what industry they work in.
So while we wait and twiddle our thumbs, myki will still go ahead, albeit a bit late, as the Transport Ticketing Authority restructure itself to stop sucking money from government, and Keane to employ new programmers. myki is a complicated thing and I never envisioned it to be an easy task. It is now going thru its 12th software revision and we be field tested in Geelong for the 2nd time during late 2008. One only hopes that the success will make the roll out quicker.
There are benefits to having myki, it means no pre planning, no multiple tickets, as it will work out the cheapest fare. Even the Go card in Queensland doesn’t have fare capping yet, and it took London’s oyster’s 3-4 year’s worth of development after initial launch to bring the ticket up to its paper version’s equivalence.
Brining the project directly into public hands makes endless bureaucratic procedures a nightmare and nothing would get done. I have worked in low levels of both state and federal entities and I can tell you that it’s not efficient to be public. The TTA is setup as a private run business of the state and thus is as close as you can get to being public run. After myki is developed, the TTA will own such a system and can export it to whomever it wants. myki is only for the best.