Bus Vannin bosses claim a new bus ticketing system will save £200,000 annually and pay for itself in two years - mainly by tackling fraud.
Tynwald last week voted overwhelmingly to spend £400,000 on the Ticketer system - with the Community Culture and Leisure Minister Graham Cregeen insisting it was not a ‘Rolls Royce’ option.
He said lessons had been learned from mistakes in the past which has resulted in the current system having to be replaced after just five years.
A public accounts committee investigation found serious mistakes had been made in the purchase of Almex which was introduced at a cost of £381,483 in 2008, but is now deemed no longer fit for purpose.
Mr Cregeen told Tynwald: ‘We’ve learned the lessons from the mistakes in the past’.
Insisting it’s ‘not a Rolls Royce scheme’, he said the replacement Ticketer system will allow for the use of Smart card technology. It will also cover the heritage railways.
The Minister claimed the system will save about £200,000 a year - and so pay for itself in two years. By helping eradicate ticket fraud alone, it would apparently save £175,000.
DCCL chief executive Nick Black told iomtoday: ‘The department knows that it currently pays £50,000 in commission to the various businesses that stock and distribute multi-journey tickets.
‘Once smart cards are available, these tickets would be topped up either on the bus or online and therefore there will be no need to issue or indeed print the current tickets. This saving is therefore easily calculated.
‘The larger element of saving comes from the analysis of actual travel versus travel that has been paid for. Industry surveys suggest that such losses are in the order of 4-10% per cent of takings and we have therefore used the low end of this range and estimate an overall combined saving of £200,000 a year. As you will know, with a capital cost of £400,000, payback will be pretty swiftly achieved with savings being generated thereafter.’
The PAC’s report on the Almex fiasco found a civil servant with no experience in this area was put in charge of procurement, hindering the selection of the most appropriate system. Almex didn’t deliver the required specification and some £30,000 had to be spent to fix it for immediate use.
Middle MHK Howard Quayle branded the DCCL’s track record as ‘disastrous’. Michael MHK Alfred Cannan suggested Ticketer’s purchase was ‘premature’ given no decision had been reached over possible privatisation.