NETHERLANDS: National passenger operator NS has awarded Thales a €120m eight-year contract for maintenance and support of the 1 700 ticket gates, 1 600 validators and 750 ticket vending machines at the country’s 400 stations.
The framework agreement announced on November 22 marks the renewal of an existing contract which has seen Thales provide hardware maintenance and software support for the past 20 years. The company said the latest contract includes new service concepts with innovative ways of working, which would result in higher overall availability.
Thales has 50 field service engineers and a 24/7 help desk maintaining the ticketing equipment, which handles 1·3 million passengers per day.
This year it upgraded the equipment to support OVPay, which in will in the future enable travellers use a bank card or phone as well as tickets and the established OV-Chipkaart smart cards to check in and out.
