Skip to main content

Milestone for Opal smart cards in Sydney

Public transport passengers in Sydney, Australia, have enthusiastically welcomed the city’s new Opal smart card, being progressively rolled out across ferries, trains, buses and light rail in the greater Sydney area, with 10,000 already issued since trials began in December 2012. By 2015 the Opal system, being installed by the Cubic-led Pearl Consortium for Transport New South Wales, will cover 42 ferry wharves, more than 300 train stations and more than 5,000 buses and light rail systems.
August 1, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
Public transport passengers in Sydney, Australia, have enthusiastically welcomed the city’s new Opal smart card, being progressively rolled out across ferries, trains, buses and light rail in the greater Sydney area, with 10,000 already issued since trials began in December 2012.

By 2015 the Opal system, being installed by the 378 Cubic-led Pearl Consortium for Transport New South Wales, will cover 42 ferry wharves, more than 300 train stations and more than 5,000 buses and light rail systems.

Figures just released by the New South Wales transport minister, Gladys Berejiklian, show that commuters have made more than 100,000 trips using the new adult Opal card to date. The Opal website, which was launched at the beginning of June this year, has already recorded approximately 100,000 visits.  Minister Berejiklian said 90 percent of customers were registering for a card online instead of by phone, and more than 70 percent were opting for the auto top-up function.

Cubic Transportation Systems’ managing director for Australasia, Tom Walker, said it is gratifying to see how enthusiastically Sydneysiders have adopted the new Opal card.  “We are delighted with the uptake of the Opal card and the benefits it is already providing to Sydney commuters,” said Walker.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Single system simplicity for smarter city transport
    February 23, 2017
    All encompassing, city-wide transport monitoring and control systems are beginning to make their way onto the market, as Colin Sowman hears. The futuristic vision of cities where everything is connected and operated with maximum efficiency by a gigantic computer remains a distant prospect but related sectors and services are beginning to coalesce: transport monitoring and control for instance.
  • Abellio and Cubic trial UK’s first ‘video ticket office’ at Stansted Airport
    February 11, 2016
    What is said to be the UK’s first ‘video ticket office’ NextAgent has arrived at Stansted Airport as transport provider Abellio and Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) trial an innovative solution to improve ticket purchasing options for rail passengers. The new NextAgent, developed by CTS, will provide passengers with the benefit of a walk-up ticket office that will connect passengers via a live video-link to an Abellio Greater Anglia ticketing expert. The system is currently being trialled at Stans
  • Calculating the cost of stellar solutions
    August 10, 2016
    The increasing availability and accuracy of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is opening up low-cost options in many areas as David Crawford finds out. Boosting commercialisation of European global navigation satellite system (EGNSS) technologies for ITS initially depends heavily on demonstrating competitive and cost/benefit advantages obtainable from the deployment of EGNOS (the current European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), and ultimately the EU’s Galileo constellation (see box). So,
  • P3s offer new options for public transit agencies
    March 28, 2018
    David Crawford welcomes new US guidance on public-private partnerships in the public transit sector. Public-private partnerships (P3s) are becoming increasingly favoured as a means of cost-effectively delivering much-needed public transit projects across the US. Previously, researched examples have tended to be on the large-scale while information on the potential for smaller, more localised schemes has been comparatively sparse. In a bid to fill that gap, the ‘Public Transportation Guidebook for Small