The Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) wants to allow the purchase of bus or metro tickets from a mobile phone as early as 2024. The body responsible for public transit in the greater Montreal area launched a call for tenders on Tuesday, a gesture that aims to make these services more easily accessible.
Concretely, the ARTM is looking for a supplier for a charging solution of the Opus card by smart phone. The system could be integrated into the mobile application of the companies that use this card. We are therefore talking here about several public transit networks, including those of Laval and the South Shore, as well as the Metropolitan Express Network (REM).
The networks of the cities of Quebec and Joliette, which also use the Opus card, will be able to use this payment system when it officially enters service, somewhere in early 2024, if everything goes as the ARTM wishes.
Users who already take the bus or metro will be able to top up their card more quickly and easily, from their phone. This is not the end of the Opus system nor the arrival of contactless payment in buses and metro stations, says Simon Boiteau, public affairs and communications advisor at the ARTM.
“The current system relies on transport cards rather than user accounts. It will be necessary to carry out several evolutions of this system to arrive at a kind of solution like contactless payment. In the meantime, we are offering users of all networks in Greater Montreal a new payment channel for their Opus card,” he says.
According to the call for tenders made by the ARTM, the new payment solution will be integrated into Chrono, the application already used by transport companies in the city and services like Bixi.
The Chrono application is therefore set to evolve to become the central point of contact for different modes of transport. The ARTM would like it to serve as a single portfolio for bus, metro, Bixi shared bike and Communauto shared car users. A taxi service is also being considered, as is the integration of any self-service electric scooters, which, according to what the administration of Mayor Valérie Plante said in the spring of 2022, should return to Montreal in the summer. next.
Develop the transport offer
This news comes at a time when the various public transport companies in the province are struggling with serious financial and logistical problems. Two years of pandemic have greatly reduced the traffic of their networks, which are struggling to recover. User habits have also evolved: travel is no longer systematically from the outskirts to the center of large cities.
The long-awaited activation of the REM on the axis of the Samuel-De Champlain bridge will also greatly change the nature of traffic between the South Shore and the central districts of Montreal. It is therefore to be expected that there will be a major upheaval in the public transport offer in the coming months.
Simplifying access to the network by introducing new features such as mobile payment could reduce the negative effect of these changes on the daily experience of passengers, it is estimated. “This is part of a broader approach to modernizing the relationship between users and service providers,” concludes Simon Boiteau.