Public and active transportation | What if everything was in one app?

BIXI, Communauto, metro, bus, taxi, carpooling: how about paying just once a month for all public or active transportation services in Montreal, based on your use, in a single application? It is on this long-term project that the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) is currently working.

Henri Ouellette-Vezina
The Press

“Our goal is really to see how we can offer a real mobility portfolio, which would include public transport, bicycles or self-service cars and all emerging modes. We really want to offer travel from point A to point B, with a complete solution,” explained the ARTM’s director general, Benoît Gendron, in an interview with The Press.

Such a mobile application is however not for tomorrow. Internally, it is envisaged that it could see the light of day “gradually” over the next five or six years. Several discussions still have to take place, but already, ideas are emerging.

“That could mean, for example, that the user pays his public transport bill at the end of the month, depending on how he uses it. We would then calculate the most interesting package, with a ceiling, to be able to pay according to the modes used, rather than paying at the beginning of the month to have a limited title, ”specifies the spokesperson for the organization, Simon Charbonneau.

The app stopwatch, offered for a few months, already includes the services offered by transport operators in Greater Montreal. But she sticks to it. What is currently being prepared at the ARTM is a veritable “buffet of services”, where everything would be offered in the same place, for a price adapted to each use.

“When we talk about dusting off public transit, that’s really what it’s all about,” says Benoît Gendron bluntly.

According to our information, Quebec has also instructed the ARTM to examine the possibility of offering such a platform beyond Greater Montreal. Each city could thus possibly use it according to its own regional mobility realities.

A “very buoyant” project

According to Pierre Barrieau, an expert in transportation planning from the University of Montreal, the idea of ​​an all-encompassing application is very promising. “It’s what we call in English the MAAS, for mobility as a service. Instead of buying a car, we sell the fact of buying a multitude of modes, and not just the metro or the bus, for example,” he explains.

Two other innovations should also arrive next year in Greater Montreal: open payment, which would be done in the metro or buses using a credit or debit card, and recharging the OPUS card at the means of a smart phone. Both initiatives were the subject of a pilot project, the conclusions of which appear to be satisfactory.

All this occurs when, since the 1^er July, transit passes by city gave way to “metropolitan” passes in Greater Montreal. All users must now pay between $94 and $255 monthly to travel through the network, depending on the number of zones used daily.

Essentially, this overhaul brings together four zones in Greater Montreal: zone A (Montreal agglomeration), zone B (Laval and Longueuil agglomeration) and zones C and D (north and south crowns). Two main titles remain: one “all modes”, which allows use of the metro, the Metropolitan Express Network (REM), buses and suburban trains, the other called “bus everywhere”, which allows use all bus networks in the metropolitan area. “Special REM-related” bus fares are also offered as needed.

Thus, a Montrealer who paid $90.50 for a monthly fare from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) must now switch to the “all modes A” fare to travel on the island, which costs $94. An “all modes AB” title costs $150, while you have to pay $184 for an “all modes ABC” title and $255 for an “all modes ABCD” title. All bus networks in Montreal, Laval and Longueuil are grouped together under the same “Bus Pass”, which costs $105 per month. The “unitary” title is maintained at $3.50.