René COUTU

Biographical note
Working at the development of the ticketing system at the Société de transport de Montreal (STM) since 1988, René Coutu took part, from 2003 to 2008, in the design and implementation of the Calypso based smart card system that aimed at serving the vast majority of the transit operators in the province of Quebec, Canada. This solution, known today as the OPUS system, serves 20 transit operators and generates more than 2 million taps a day. From 2008 to 2012, René Coutu managed the IT group that operates the OPUS solution. Since 2012, he is in charge of establishing the main orientations in the technological evolution of the OPUS solution.

Presentation: Web services: a new smart card perspective to mobility
Transit smart cards usually make use of proprietary technology, a reality that often may be seen as an obstacle to interoperability between systems of the mobility actors. In order to significantly increase the integration capacity of these actors, STM is now offering them, by means of Web Services, an easy and secure way to get access to the content of the OPUS transit smart card.
This paper will present this new approach and the results of the pilot project conducted by STM and the OPUS community with Montreal’s bike-sharing system (conducted from August to November 2016), a project that allowed OPUS card users to make use of the BIXI Montreal bikes. Even though the approach has its limitations (which will be discussed), the potential uses of this simple and low cost alternative will be presented.