Meet Opus, your new smart card

Maybe it’s just me, but when I think of Opus, it’s the neurotic, herring-addicted penguin from the Bloom County comic strip that comes to mind. Now I’ll have to think of something else: Montreal’s new smart card, which was officially unveiled today.

While we’ve written a lot about the card’s conception, implementation and potential benefits, what I was really concerned about was what the card will be named. Around the world, many cities have given their smart cards catchy names invested with symbolism: Hong Kong named its card Octopus, which suggested that its tentacles (all of eight of them, eight being a lucky number in Chinese culture) would reach every corner of the city. London took a similar approach and named its card Oyster, as in “the city is your oyster.” Boston recently introduced the CharlieCard, named after a public transit folk hero. Other cities, however, have chosen bland, forgettable names like Navigo (Paris), EZLink (Singapore) and SmarTrip (Washington).

If you ask me, Montreal could have done a lot worse. Opus refers to a creative work or composition, with a particular emphasis on connection, which is particularly appropriate for a card that will allow transit users to pass effortlessly between all of Montreal’s public transit systems, including the STM, AMT, RTL, STL and the CITs. More than that, though, Opus seems to capture Montreal’s cosmopolitan spirit, especially since it’s a multilingual word used in French, English, Italian, Portuguese and a number of other languages.

Of course, what truly matters about the smart card is not what it’s called but how it will be used. On that end of things, today’s launch didn’t bring with it anything we didn’t already know: while transit users in select parts of Montreal and all of Longueuil will be able to use the card right away, it will be phased in gradually over the next year. Students will be able to get their new reduced-fare Opus cards in the summer and most regular-fare users will get their cards in the fall. You can find out more on the Opus card’s new website, carteopus.info, and Pamela Shaprio will address some of the concerns over the new card’s impact on fares in Part II of our launch coverage.

Meanwhile, maybe the STM should consider hiring a certain penguin to be its mascot…