Subscribe to RSSSnapper Puts Its Case
Snapper has today issued a press release crowing about its success in bringing its Snapper smart card to Auckland
Snapper CEO, Miki Szikszai, said in his release: “Snapper’s expertise in ticketing equipment, smartcards, logistics and customer support are being used to make Phase 1 of Hop happen.
“Having Snapper and Hop together in the market is incredibly powerful for the customer. This partnership means customers will get an integrated ticketing system for public transport from Auckland Transport, and the best nationwide everyday payments platform from Snapper - all in one package.”
He said the Snapper work required them to:
- Supply and install Snapper’s ticketing equipment on all NZ Bus services.
- Supply a new, fully branded and packaged smartcard to replace the existing Go Rider card used in the Auckland market.
- Provide a large network of Snapper retailers throughout the Auckland market where customers can conveniently top up and spend.
- Provide great customer support.
“These are all significant sub-projects in themselves and Snapper has enlisted the support of trusted partners such as HTS for bus installations, ABnote for smartcard production, and EFTPOS NZ and Smartpay for retail installations.”
“To help customers who still have money on their old Go Rider card, Snapper has developed a standalone PC-based application that will automatically transfer the balance of their old Go Rider card to their new Hop card with a Snapper logo in just a few seconds.
“We believe that Snapper is the first in the world to develop a tool like this that reads a 20-year old smartcard, calculates the value across all the transport products on it, and writes this as a single dollar value to a modern smartcard.”
He says the Auckland move involves the need to:
- house and unpack 31 pallets of equipment
- test over 4,000 pieces of complex electronic equipment
- spend 13,000 manhours pre-wiring buses
- tie nearly 70,000 cable ties (more cable ties had to be sourced from overseas in the middle of the project as the local New Zealand supply was exhausted)
- pop 4,500 rivets
- connect 34,000 screws, nuts and bolts
- stick 500 rolls of insulation tape
- connect 3,000m of steel tubing
- make and install 1,600 validator poles
- install 26,000m of conduit
- feed 22,000m of cables into the conduit.
In the next few weeks the team will:
- fit 1,600 validators
- install over 650 bus driver consoles
- connect an additional 22,000 screws and washers
- and plug in over 6,000 plugs
- then test that it all works.
12 Comments
They’re going to feed 22,000m of cable into 26,000m of conduit. By my maths, that means the cable is 4km shorter than the conduit they’re feeding it into. Oh dear lol
how many retailers in West Auckland before the go-west launch?
I could only find waterview superette on the site…
@Bryan
There was 22,000m of validator cables that went into the conduit.
There’s also several thousand metres of GPS and power cabling that went into the conduit.
In total many more metres of cabling than conduit.
@joust check out http://www.snapper.co.nz/snapper-in-retailers/ for the most up to date list of Snapper retailers, including West Auckland. Also a handy Google Map at http://bit.ly/ictic1.
There are more retailers that have signed up and will be installed over the coming weeks.
Cheers
Gabor
I’d just like to say, that the Wellington Snapper customer support has not been the greatest. They are having some trouble combining their own internal systems apparently which has ment some users having a rather long wait for their accounts to be reconciled. Hopefully those in Auckland experience a better deal.
@ Joust
None. That’s what I’m complaining about.
just want to put this out there… say you swipe on a platform and your train is cancelled or delayed and you cant wait for the next train. You’ve already ‘started’ paying for the journey you are no longer going to take. Say the next day (for a regular commuter) you swipe again, it will register you swiped on and off at the same platform and predict you fare dodged and whack you with a full fare from say Britomart to Pukekohe. How are they going to get around this problem? can you swipe on and off at the same platform but only within x amount of minutes to allow for these disruptions?
A Thales program member mentioned that you would be allowed to tag on then tag off from the same platform at no charge in the situation you mention. He did mention however that this capability is unlikely to be well promoted as it implies unreliability in the rail system. I assume there will be some kind of time limit but an not sure what it is. If you tag just once be prepared to be stung with a penalty fee. You must tag on every time you step on a platform and tag off every time you leave.
Hooray, we finally get a HOP retailer in West City!!!
As per the myhop.co.nz website, plus “Hop” leaflets and posters, Waka Pacific buses were to change to HOP on May 22nd, 2011.
On May 26th, travelling between Auckland CBD and Royal Oak, I saw that only a few Waka Pacific buses have actually changed over to HOP. Most have NOT.
Those of us who heeded the info posted on http://www.myhop.co.nz (often inaccessible, btw) and exchanged our “Go Rider” cards for HOP cards were inconvenienced. I had to pay in cash, an unexpected expense for which I had not budgeted and which left me out of pocket.
When are ALL Waka Pacific buses going to change to HOP?
Are there going to be similar problems with Metrolink and Link buses?
Off Topic Jon, But i was wondering where i could add a profile picture…?
@Anthony It is called a Gravatar. Sign up here
http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup
More on the size of image you can use etc is here
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/12/31/adding-avatars-and-gravatars-to-your-wordpress-and-wordpresscom-blog/
Look forward to seeing yours soon!
Poor effort that they didn’t set up online top ups to replace on bus top ups at launch. I won’t be using HOP until online top ups are available.