AUSTRALIA: Contactless payment is now available on Brisbane’s Ferny Grove suburban rail line, as a trial ahead of a large-scale deployment across Queensland’s rail, bus and ferry services under transport agency Translink’s A$371m Smart Ticketing project.
The trial between Ferny Grove and Central stations began on June 6. Passengers travelling beyond these stations, using concession fares or transferring to a bus or ferry, will need to continue using Go smart cards or purchase a paper ticket.
The rail deployment follows from the successful launch on the Gold Coast Light Rail system in December 2020.
Further routes will be added this year, with more than 230 Smart Ticketing gates wrapped in indigenous artwork to be installed across Queensland Rail’s 19 gated stations.
This will be followed by the installation of more than 13 500 payment devices on buses and ferries.
State Transport Minister Mark Bailey said ‘this is an epic programme to unite all these different disparate systems into one’.
The technology is being supplied by Cubic Transportation Systems, and is similar to that used in London, San Francisco and New York.
John Karaboulis, Managing Director of Cubic Australia, said ‘Queensland should be congratulated for this landmark project — installing the world’s most modern and largest contactless ticketing system right across the state, an area larger than Great Britain and more than twice the size of Texas.’
