Opus cards going online by end of 2013
Users will be able to add fares from their home computers
As early as next year, Montreal transit users may be able to register their Opus cards and add fares online.
“We want to make this available on a large scale by the end of 2013,” said Gordon Teasdale, a director in the Société de transport de Montréal’s finance department.
Details have yet to be finalized. But in an ongoing pilot project, Teasdale said, users insert their Opus cards into a small device connected to their computer via a USB port. Fares are paid by credit card.
The devices cost about $10 each. It’s unclear whether the STM or the transit user would pay for the device.
Teasdale said the STM considered a system that does not
“We want to replace them before they get damaged and no longer work.”
ODILE PARADIS
require a device but rejected it because it would have required changes to the software on Opus card readers.
With an online system, users can add fares at any time and without the need for an Opus machine. Cards can be registered online.
Currently, registration can only be done in person.
Teasdale disclosed the online-opus timeline after a news conference Wednesday at which the STM announced how it and other transit authorities in the region will replace expired Opus cards.
Transit agencies will replace cards for free when they reach their expiry date.
Introduced in April 2008, the cards expire after four years. The STM alone will spend $1 million replacing as many as 190,000 cards this year.
“It’s preventive – we want to replace them before they get damaged and no longer work,” said STM spokesperson Odile Paradis.
The replacement program does not apply to cards that feature a photo. Those cards – for children, students and seniors – have different validity periods.
Card expiration dates can be checked at Opus machines, at retailers selling Opus fares and online at carteopus.info. Cards must be replaced in the 90 days before they expire. After the expiration date, the card will be disabled.
To get new cards and have outstanding fares transferred to them, transit users must take expiring cards to: An STM service counter. They are at the BERRI-UQAM, Côte Vertu, Lionel-groulx, Honoré-beaugrand and Jean- Talon métro stations, and at the bus terminus at the Fairview Pointe Claire mall. A métro station ticket booth, but this applies exclusively to cards that contain a monthly pass for the current month. If you have any other type of fare or have already purchased the next month’s monthly pass, you must go to a service counter.
STM users cannot replace their expiring cards using Opus machines because STM machines are only set up to add fares to cards – they do not dispense new Opus cards, said Marianne Rouette, an STM spokesperson.
For other transit agencies, users must go to their respective service counters.
Things get complicated for users with cards featuring fares from multiple transit agencies. If a card has tickets for both the STM and the Agence métropolitaine de transport, a user must go to an STM counter as the AMT can’t replace STM tickets.
Authorities are encouraging users to register cards when they replace them. If a registered Opus is lost or stolen, outstanding fares can be restored on a new card.
Today, only about one-third of cards are registered.
Rouette said copper from old cards will be recycled. The plastic cannot be reused or recycled but Rouette said it will go to a third party that will shred and incinerate the plastic to create energy.