The Colombian Caribbean coastal city of Cartagena signed a deal worth $370 million with a U.S and a Brazilian company to implement the fare collection system for the city’s proposed integrated mass transit system, announced a communique from Smartmatic released Monday.
Florida-based Smartmatic, a technology management company, and Brazilian Dataprom, will implement and operate the electronic ticketing and fleet management system, for Transcaribe. Transcaribe is the bus network which will serve the metropolitan area of Cartagena.
Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO, said that “We are overly pleased at having been selected by the Colombian authorities to bring our contributions and expertise to their transportation system.”
The ticketing system is expected to go into operation in 2012, although the bus system has an initial operation date of July 2011 according to the Transcaribe website. Tickets are to cost $0.88 (COP 1,600).
The two-party consortium beat four other bidders in the public bidding process to put in place the system, which is expected to have a life span of 18 years.