Capital sets up swipe card contract

In an advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Union on 20 August 2010, the organisation that runs London's Freedom Pass concessionary fares scheme predicts a minimum of some 2m cards will be required over the next five years. It points out that there is no guarantee that councils will use the contract, as this will largely depend on funding. The uncertainty is reflected in the value range of between £3m and £7m. The contract, expected to start in July 2011, will be divided into five 'lots'. The first three lots relate to production of the Freedom Pass for older and disabled Londoners. More than 99% of these passes which need to be compliant with the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS). In addition, they have to be an Oyster style swipe card for use on the London tube, bus and rail networks. "Pre-encoded Oyster cards will be provided to the contractor for personalisation and where appropriate ENCTS ITSO encoding," says the advertisement. But if the scheme switches to ITSO only cards, the selected contractor will have to source compliant cards at a price that reflects "economies of scale". Lot four relates to direct customer support and Lot five to the production of non-ENCTS cards.