Seniors, students and other users benefiting from fare discounts will soon no longer need to go to a ticket office to renew their OPUS card. Before long, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) would like to be able to validate their identity remotely and proceed 100% digitally.
This is what we learn in a call for proposals published this Tuesday on the Electronic Tendering System (SEAO), where all public bodies have the legal obligation to publish any contract that is likely to exceed 25 000 $.
By email, the STM specifies that it aims to find a software solution to “allow the issuance of personalized cards which give entitlement to reduced fares”, but remotely, “without customers having to present themselves in ticketing, as is the case today.”
This approach is part of the vast digital transformation underway at the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM), which should culminate in 2027. This project will ultimately unify different transport services and make it possible to pay with a telephone or a card. credit. The mobile recharge of the OPUS card, planned shortly from the beginning of 2024, is also part of this project.
End of August, The Press revealed that this transformation would cost 144 million, with a budget for contingencies of 18.5 million, for a total of 162 million. The ARTM estimates that these investments would bring in 364 million in benefits by 2035, in addition to exploding the number of trips.
In the short term, the STM therefore aims in some way to prepare for this transition, since “the validation of customer identity to obtain certain privileges will still be required with the digital transformation that the ARTM wishes to lead”, says the spokesperson for the transport company, Amélie Régis.
By 2025, at most
According to the call for interests, the STM wants to put this solution into effect by 2025 at the most. It would first be reserved for people aged 65 and over, who have benefited from free public transport in the metropolis since last July, a key promise of the Plante administration.
Once the digital system is in place, a Montreal senior could then “make a request to obtain their free transportation pass online and this verification solution would validate their age and address in order to validate eligibility,” explains M.me Regis.
Several other categories of users will be able to benefit from the digital platform, but only in a second phase, says the ARTM.
“The short-term focus is on people aged 65 and over, but it is planned that this solution will then be extended to the entire population who could benefit from a reduction depending on their status, for example students, 12-17 years old. All for the benefit of all users of the Montreal metropolitan region,” argues the public affairs advisor of the Regional Authority, Isabelle Brisson-Urdaneta.
If all goes well, the other transportation companies in Greater Montreal – the Société de transport de Laval (STL), the Réseau de transport de Longueuil (RTL), exo and even the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) – will then be able to benefit from this initiative in turn. The estimated cost of future digital identity validation software is still unknown. In writing, the company specifies that the call for proposals “aims precisely to know the market and the costs of such a system”.