Indian Express 18.08.2010
Coming soon: prepaid smart card for BRT buses
Express News Service Tags : smart card prepaid Posted: Wed Aug 18 2010, 03:30 hrs
Ahmedabad: A prepaid smart card will become a reality on the BRT buses from October as the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) goes for a new technology provider. After dumping the Mumbai-based Kaizen Engineering Systems, AMC has zeroed in on an Indo-Spanish consortium for the job.The new consortium will handle the integrated transit management system of automated fare collection, public information system and vehicle tracking system, besides preparing a smart card for the bus journeys.
Vayam Technologies, and their Spanish partner, GMV, secured the contract for six years, following a fresh decision by the civic body.
The new consortium will operate 116 BRT buses and 150 BRT stations for six years against a payment of Rs 77.41 crore. Under the previous scheme of things, Kaizen was to operate 280 buses and 170 bus stations for seven years against a payment of Rs 153.18 crore. But it failed to operate even 50 buses and 30 bus stations for a payment of Rs 74.11 crore for six months, despite considerable lapse of time, said Deputy Municipal Commissioner U C Padia.
He said Kaizen had spent Rs 5 crore on system installation, which could be utilised by the new service provider, and Kaizen reimbursed. “If Kaizen is asked to take away installations like computers and other systems, new ones will have to be procured,” Padia said.
Vayam is a Delhi-based IT solutions company, while Madrid-based GMV is considered a leader in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), offering turnkey solutions and complete project development.
Padia said this time AMC has made GMV primarily responsible for successfully running the complete operations with its own technology.
