The South Australian Government will call tenders for its bus contracts in June this year. According to Kevin O'Callaghan, Executive Director
The South Australian Government will call tenders for its bus contracts in June this year.
According to Kevin O’Callaghan, Executive Director of the Department of Transport, if all goes to plan successful operators will be running services on five-year contracts by October 1 next year at the latest.
“We expect to go to the market in mid-2010,” he told the Urban Transport World Conference in Sydney this week.
“The intention is to go to POI (points of interest) by mid-year, with a request for tenders or proposals by August, and for a decision to be made by early 2011, [in] February [or] March, so we can have new operators in place by July 1 [2011], if the current incumbents win.
“If new players emerge then we would expect [services to get under way by] October 1.”
O’Callaghan says the five-year term was chosen to coincide with completion of SA’s rail electrification process.
This will give the Government more of an idea about the future of public transport services to cope with predicted population growth of more than 500,000, he says.