A lobbyist for Infratil phoned last week to suggest the wrangle over transfer tickets for buses and trains in Auckland was worth a closer look. I'd suspected it might be. When sinister corporate forces are said to be confounding a public project there is usually an interesting issue unexplained.

My interest in Auckland's public transport probably seems keener than it is. I have an abiding fascination with the determination of regional planners to make a city fit their conception of what it should be, rather than what it plainly is and probably ever will be. Beyond that, the subject is mechanics.

Obviously an "integrated ticket", as the Auckland Regional Transport Agency calls it, would be helpful if fixed-route services are ever to serve a population of diverse daily travel patterns.

Every trip would involve a transfer or two and nothing is more off-putting than multiple fares and fumbling for change.

And it would not seem rocket science these days to record every trip electronically and reconcile the fares and subsidies owed to the various companies at the end of the day. So I have wondered over the years why the Arta was making such heavy weather of it.

For a long time its parent body, the Regional Council, blamed the privatisation of bus services, but that didn't make sense. Why would independent operators resist a ticket that would make all their services more attractive and save them the costs of collecting fares and giving change?

In any event, the previous government legislated a little more power for the council and last year the Arta invited ticketing tenders. This year it settled on a bid from a French electronic company, Thales, preferring it to two others, one of them from an Infratil subsidiary, Snapper Services.

Infratil also owns the company that runs most of the Auckland buses and has been shutting out the drivers during their wage dispute. On the integrated ticket it has been reported as a sore loser, lobbying for an over-rule in Wellington where final decisions on Auckland projects are always made because national taxpayers bear the bulk of the costs.

This week the Government's Transport Agency announced its decision. It would fund the Arta's ticketing scheme but only if it was capable of being extended nationwide, which Snapper's could be. The Arta would have to talk to Thales again.

National public transport officials share their Auckland counterparts' dislike of the Snapper proposal. This I'd read before the Snapper man came to see me but I didn't know why.