The long, winding road to the $1.36 billion National Ticketing Solution

Sunday, 28 June 2026

Motu Move is the brand which the National Ticketing Solution will be rolled out under.

ANALYSIS: With the scandal of Immigration NZ’s biometric programme costing $33 million for literally no progress, Government IT projects are in the headlights of politicians and commentators.

One of the largest, which has escaped without much attention in recent times, is the $1.36 billion National Ticketing Solution (NTS).

If you have not heard of it (to borrow a Lord of the Rings reference), it will create one payment system to rule all of New Zealand’s public transport. It will allow people on any bus, train or ferry in the country to pay using their phone, watch or debit card.

While it is generally considered by most to be a good idea, progress on it has been in the slow zone to say the least.

The original plan

The idea of the NTS is not new.

It was first approved by the NZTA board to be introduced 16 years ago in 2009, when the iPhone had only been out for two years and ministers in John Key’s National-led Government had fairly recently got their feet under the desks of the Beehive.

NZTA’s original plan was to take over Auckland’s HOP card system ‒ which was being rolled out in the super city between 2011 and 2014 ‒ and expand it nationally.

In 2014 a group of nine councils was formed to buy the AT HOP card system for its use but in 2015 that consortium and Greater Wellington Regional Council failed to agree on a purchase price, spelling the end of that plan.

The unified approach

In 2018, NZTA decided to bring all of the public transport providers together including Auckland Transport to develop what we currently know as the NTS.

In April that year the agency’s board approved funding for a business case and procurement.

Between 2018 and 2022, officials were presumably busy working away on the project as there were not many major announcements till 2022. In July that year, a detailed business case was approved and three months later US defence and public transport company Cubic was named as the preferred provider for the project.

Former Transport Minister Michael Wood announced US defence and public transport company Cubic would develop and run the NTS.

NZTA agreed to shell out $1.36b to the company for its work developing the NTS and to run it for 14 years.

Then Transport Minister Michael Wood said it would be rolled out in Canterbury by 2024 with the expectation it would be on all buses, trains and ferries by the end of 2026 (spoiler alert ‒ it won’t be).

As part of a transition process to the NTS, $25.6 million was spent to give Auckland a contactless payment system by the end of 2024 ‒ with the Government paying for 46% of that and Auckland Council paying the rest.

NTS goes off course

The period between 2024 and essentially now is where the project gets a bit wild.

At the end of 2024, a pilot run of the NTS was launched on a Christchurch bus route but it did not come to other parts of Canterbury as planned at the time ‒ that was pushed back to “early 2025”.

Early 2025 came and went and by May, NZTA was saying it would not be able to launch in Timaru and Temuka as planned ‒ noting it was originally planned to be earlier in the year ‒ due to “more complex components of the Motu Move system taking longer than expected”.

“We’ve been considering alternative ways to start to deliver new ways to pay into Canterbury while we continue working on the broader solution.

“We’d expect to confirm a revised plan in the next few months.”

Transport Minister Chris Bishop painted a less than rosy picture about the project, confirming at a select committee it was off track and no options were off the table to correct its course.

Transport Minister Chris Bishop has expressed his frustration with the pace of progress on the NTS.

It was announced that an independent review of the NTS had been undertaken and its leadership was being reset.

In September the report by LEK Consulting was released publicly ‒ though highly redacted due to commercial sensitivity.

The consultant company found “there is a very high likelihood of further significant delays” and “an inability to deliver the full scope within the committed contract value”.

In October it was announced that the project was indeed set to be delayed, with the date for the system being fully in place moved from the end of 2026 to the end of 2027.

Where are we now?

With the leadership shaken up, and NZTA and Cubic given some more time, all sounded deliverable.

But in March, The Post reported that a follow up review of the NTS found its delayed launch dates were still “ambitious” and that it was facing ongoing cost pressures.

The report also found a lack of commitment from Greater Wellington Regional Council and Auckland Transport posed a big problem.

“Without such commitment, significant risk will remain with respect to the capacity to effectively manage the programme from both a time and cost perspective.”

Over the months between the review and the reporting by The Post, Greater Wellington Regional Council announced it would launch its own contactless payment system which would cost $5.3m.

The report took aim at Wellington’s own ticketing project saying it would be “a distraction for GWRC staff who might otherwise be engaged on NTS”.

How much has been spent?

In a response to The Post, NZTA said the project’s $1.36b budget was split into $528m for design and implementation and $830m for operational costs which covers through to 2037.

The agency said to May this year $271m had been spent, with $251m for design and implementation, and $20m for ongoing operational costs.

It said the NTS included national back-office services, the operation and renewal of ticketing equipment, and the complexity of aligning 13 public transport authorities into one system while supporting regional requirements.

“Regional contactless upgrades are typically one-off changes and don’t include these ongoing costs.

“By comparison, continuing with separate systems is estimated to cost around $784 million over 14 years, without delivering national integration or the wider system benefits.

“Staying with four separate systems would mean requiring hundreds of millions of additional investment from public transport authorities and Government.”