Fifteen years after its launch in Quebec and Montreal, the Opus card has had its day. In the era of dematerialized transactions, the system is starting to look like a dinosaur. This is why the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) is working with the region’s transport companies to implement technological solutions which will begin to be deployed starting next year.
Queue 1er of the month at a ticket vending machine will soon be a thing of the past. At the beginning of 2024, it will be possible to recharge your Opus card using a smartphone.
Gradually, by the end of 2026, other measures will be deployed to modernize the securities payment system. At the end of 2024, several stations of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) and the metro as well as bus lines in the northern crown will allow payment by credit or debit card, which users of the Société de transport de Laval (STL) have been able to do for years. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) has also undertaken to install compatible equipment for contactless payment in metro stations and buses.
Then, in 2025, it will be possible to create a mobility account on a smartphone, which will eliminate the problems linked to the cohabitation of different titles.
The business plan for the Digital Mobility Project, approved by the ARTM board of directors, estimates the cost of developing the plan at $162 million by 2028. The ARTM, however, expects what new technology leads to an increase in ridership and additional revenue of more than 360 million between 2024 and 2035 with operating costs of 140 million. It is counting in particular on the support of occasional and sporadic users to make gains in this area.
By the ARTM’s own admission, the system behind the Opus card “is lagging considerably behind in technology”. But why is modernizing the payment system taking so long?
The general director of the ARTM, Benoît Gendron, maintains that the pandemic has harmed the progress of the project. “During the pandemic, it was more or less the time to launch projects with the drastic drop in traffic,” he maintains. “We had our minds busy seeing how we managed the finances. » He also points out that the implementation of such systems is a long-term task. Paris began deploying its plan in 2012 and it will be finalized in 2024, he emphasizes.
The ARTM, however, affirms that the project is well on track with the “Concerto” team, which brings together representatives of the three transport companies in the metropolitan region, Exo and the City of Montreal. Other transportation companies in Quebec, which already operate the Opus system, should subsequently join the new system.
But it’s been a pretty bumpy road so far. Last September, The Press reported that the project called “Céleste”, announced by the STM in 2018, had been thwarted by the ARTM the following year and that collaboration between the organizations was lacking. Céleste aimed to create a customer account with access to several modes of transport as well as easy payment with bank cards.
The ARTM assures, however, that transport companies are now mobilized around a common project and that users should see the fruits of this work from next year.
Inequities
The fact remains that the technological shift will not resolve an irritant that particularly exasperates South Shore users, namely the zone system which means that a resident of Longueuil will pay more to travel 4 kilometers than a resident of Pointe- aux-Trembles which must cover some 20 kilometers.
“It’s still illogical. Then it will become even more so when the REM arrives in the west of the island,” points out Axel Fournier, of the Association for Collective Transport of the South Shore. “I understand it’s political. The City of Montreal has very strong control over what happens at the ARTM, too strong in fact, because the concerns of people in the crown are not really heard. »
At least, technological changes will allow several titles to coexist on the same Opus card. Currently, a user with zone A tickets must buy another Opus card to put zone AB tickets on it. Mr. Fournier has two Opus cards. “But I know people who have four. »
Full professor at Polytechnique Montréal, Martin Trépanier agrees that this zone system is not a priori fair, but that a pricing model based on the distance traveled would require the costly addition of validation equipment at the exit. “It’s a historical notion. In Hong Kong, they had this in place from the start. In Australia, it’s part of the customs and people pay by distance,” he says, pointing out that in certain countries, users receive a bill at the end of the month and the system calculates the most advantageous rate for them. “ But in the Montreal region, we decided that it didn’t work like that. »
Benoît Gendron argues that as part of the work to overhaul the 2020 price list, the customers surveyed favored the zone system. “Pricing based on kilometer distance exists in Europe, but here, people found themselves more according to territory. »
However, technology continues to evolve rapidly. Co-founder and president of Transit, Samuel Vermette indicates that with digital wallets, it would no longer be required to create a system based on the customer account. “The project that the ARTM is trying to implement is a gigantic project. Inside that, there is payment by credit card,” he summarizes, while showing optimism for the future despite the delays.
According to him, however, although the challenge of the technological shift is important, maintaining the service offering remains the central concern in the context where transport companies are struggling with significant deficits.