10,000 students benefit from the new Concordia-STM transit project

This fall, more than 10,000 Concordians skipped a visit to the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and ordered their reduced-fare OPUS transit cards online.

The newly automated process, launched in August as a pilot project in collaboration with the STM, allows eligible Concordia students to purchase their reduced-fare card through the university’s website. Students receive their cards by mail, eliminating the need to show up at the STM booth in person with a stamped form.

Anthony Boulos, an industrial engineering student at Concordia was at the source of the idea to revisit the OPUS card issuance process. He took it on as a class assignment.

After getting an A for his project, Boulos pitched the pilot to the STM and Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) at the university, who then partnered to further develop the idea and approach.

The solution made headlines when the new system went online for the back-to-school crunch.

The goal for the pilot was to get 5,000 to 7,000 students to use the new system. Demand was surpassed by more than 2,000 orders by the end of October.

With this massive response, the pilot has been deemed a success and the STM expects it to spark interest from other educational institutions on the island to make the process easier for their students, too.

"We are constantly looking for ways to improve the customer experience and facilitate their travel,” says Philippe Schnobb, chairman of the Montreal Transit Corporation. “The pilot project developed in collaboration with Concordia University certainly moves us in this direction, and the success of this first year is very encouraging.”

For Marc Denoncourt, the university’s chief information officer, the result was extremely satisfying.

“This is a unique service in Quebec that only Concordia students have access to,” he says. “Our vision to support a student project and to enhance the student experience is paying off. Our collaboration with the STM is a great example of teamwork.’’  

Denoncourt acknowledged the leadership of two individuals involved with the project: René Coutu, director of ticketing studies with the STM, and Alex Aragona, director of Application Portfolio Management, IITS at Concordia.

As for Boulos, who was part of the project development team throughout, the new system came online just as he headed into the final year of his studies. He was able to purchase his last student OPUS card using the system he helped design.

Order your student OPUS card online.

Find out more about Concordia's Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.