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If, as the old saying goes, a camel is a horse designed by committee, I shudder to think how many committees were involved in the conceiving of the Opus card reader.

The widely maligned device, which hit the market in July, has been a certified flop, selling a paltry 9,510 units in its first six months, according to a recent report in Métro. (To be fair, that’s still about 9,500 more than I would have predicted.)

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For perspective, consider that there are some 600,000 OPUS users who reload their cards monthly in and around Montreal, which means only 1.6 per cent of those potential customers shelled out for the reader.

Even more damning, the ill-fated gadget cost local transit agencies whose fares operate on the OPUS system — as well as the federal and provincial governments, who also kicked in funding — $7.6 million dollars to develop. That works out to just over $757 per user, a rather inefficient use of our tax dollars, to put it gently.