TechnologyTechnology

Railway Technology Today 11 (Edited by Kanji Wako)

Passenger Service Technologies
Koichi GotoIntroduction

This article describes passenger service
technologies on Japanese railways. The
main topics are trends in seat reservation
systems (especially for express trains),
automatic ticket machines in stations, andautomatic fare collection systems, such as
automatic ticket checking machines.
Ticket systems using contactless IC cards,
which have the potential to revolutionize
passenger services, are also described.
Another recent topic is making railway
facilities barrier-free in order to facilitate
their use by elderly and disabled people.
Some of these activities are also described.

Characteristics of Japanese
Railway Environment

The decision about what passenger
services to provide, and what technologies
and systems to develop in order to achievethese services is closely linked to a
country’s railway environment. A
distinguishing characteristic of Japan’s
railway environment is the existence ofmany railway companies (for example,
the JRs and other publicly and privately
owned railways), forming a complex
network providing high-density, high-Old ledger-based ticketing system50

Japan Railway & Transport Review 24 • July 2000

volume passenger transport typified by the
metropolitan areas, especially Tokyo.
Passengers commonly change betweenlines run by different companies to ridefrom a suburb well outside Tokyo, into theheart of the city, and then out to anothersuburb, all without ever stepping outside
a station.
This kind of commuter network hasdeveloped in the major cities, but the JRs’high-speed shinkansen services on standard
gauge also link major cities. The
shinkansen lines are linked to narrowgauge express lines at main stations,forming a railway network linking every
major city in Japan. In addition to the JRs,
most larger private railways also operate
express train services with reserved seating.
The JRs alone offer over 1 million reservedseats each day, and these seat reservations
must be managed efficiently.
All entrances to Japanese train stations
have ticket barriers, unlike many stations
in Europe, the USA and elsewhere, where
tickets are not checked between entering
the station and boarding the train, withtickets being collected on board.
However, with the exception of some lowtraffic lines in rural areas, this method is
not used in Japan, partly due to historicalprecedent and partly because on-board
ticket checking is almost impossible(JR Systems)

during rush hours due to the extremely
high density of passengers.
This environment makes speed andaccuracy the first requirements for ticket
reservation and automatic fare collection
systems. If automatic ticket machines andticket-checking gates are unable toperform as needed, stations would soon
be in chaos. Companies in the JR groupbegin accepting seat reservations at 10:00
one month before the reservation day, andeach day’s reservation requests aretransmitted from over 8000 terminals
nationwide. The number of reservation
requests is really high around the New
Year and other holidays so the computer
systems must be high performance andhighly reliable or else glitches are reported
on TV and in newspapers.
Platforms at Japanese stations are usuallybuilt level with the train floor, making it
possible to board without having to stepup or down. However, these platforms
are rarely built at ground level, passengers
must use stairs, escalators, and lifts to getfrom ground level outside the station to
the platforms. If the station is elevated(over the tracks), the up and down walking
distance becomes significant. This is amajor problem for elderly and disabled
passengers and even for passengers
carrying heavy items. This problem is said

Latest MARS terminal for automatic seat reservation and ticketing(JR Systems)

Copyright © 2000 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

MARS central computer room

to be driving passengers away from trains
to cars, so it must be solved if passenger
services are to be improved.

Ticket Reservation System
The old ticket reservation system was run
by people, telephone lines, and ledgers.
When there was a reservation request fora train, the station staff would transmit therequest to the office that managed thereservation ledger for that train bytelephone. The person at that office would
then look up the ledger for the train inquestion, and if there were seats available,would record the reservation in the ledger.
If a seat was available, the station staff
would hand-write a ticket. The
photograph on p. 50 shows a turntableused to switch between ledgers quickly.
Although this system was designed toallow more seating reservations to behandled, there are clear limitations on
how far a manual system can be taken.
In the 1950s, the Japanese National
R a i l w a y s ’ r e s e a rc h i n s t i t u t e — t h epredecessor of today’s Railway TechnicalR e s e a rc h I n s t i t u t e ( RT R I ) — b e g a nr e s e a rc h i n g a c o m p u t e r i z e d s e a t
reservation system. An online system wasbuilt whereby computer-managed files

Copyright © 2000 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

(JR Systems)

CyberStation home page providing ticketing information

replaced ledgers, and computer terminals
replaced telephones, but at the time, there
was nothing similar in all Japan. In fact,
this system represented a world first. The
research started with the most fundamental
aspects of the system, including thecomputer hardware. As a result, the firstticket reservation computer made up of
12 terminals called MARS 1 was installedin the ticket office of Tokyo Station in June
1959. At that time, the system could only
be used to make reservations and could
not issue tickets, but it was subsequently
improved, and when the Tokaido
Shinkansen started operations in 1964,
MARS 101, a full-scale system including
automated ticketing, was put online.
Continuous improvements yielded
increasingly better performance and when
JNR was split up and privatized in 1987,
the Railway Information Systems Co., Ltd.
(JR Systems) took over operation andmanagement of the system. The latest seatreservation system consists of MARS
terminals and the central computer room
issuing 1.5 million reserved and openseating tickets each day. It also handles
hotel reservations and tickets for a wide
variety of events, and allows payment bycredit card. The man-machine interface
using touch screens was designed to allow
operators to conduct many complex(JR Systems)

actions quickly. There are also machines
in stations that can be operated directly
by passengers. JR Systems Co., Ltd. also
allows passengers to access train ticket
information from their home computers.

Automatic Fare
Collection System
In the past, tickets were issued by station
staff from ticket windows, and tickets werechecked by a guard at the ticket barrier.
Ticketing and ticket collection are now
mostly handled by machines in order toimprove efficiency and free employees
from this laborious task. Ticket sales wereautomated first. Currently, almost alltickets except reserved seats, longdistance tickets, and special discounttickets are sold by automatic ticket
machines. Early machines could only sell
single-fare tickets, but they were improved
and one machine can now sell manydifferent fares. Similarly, the first machines
could only accept coins, but they can now
handle banknotes of all denominations.
When a passenger inserts money into themachine, every button for less than theinserted amount lights up. When thepassenger presses a button, the ticket isissued and change is given if the insertedmoney exceeded the fare. However,Japan Railway & Transport Review 24 • July 200051

Technology52

before using this type of ticket machine,
the passenger must look up the cost of theticket on a fare chart. More recently, atouch-screen interface is used to reducethe burden on the passenger by allowing
passengers to choose stations rather thanmonetary amounts. The photographbelow shows this type of automatic ticket
machine, operated by JR East. There isalso a prepaid fare system that frees
passengers from the need to purchasetickets. With this system, the passenger
inserts a prepaid card into the automatic
ticket gate at boarding and the fare is
deducted automatically later when thepassenger passes through the exit gate.
There are also extremely popular stored
fare (SF) cards that can be used on lines
of several railway companies.
As mentioned earlier, in Japan, tickets arechecked at the ticket gate. Any automaticgate to take the place of human ticket
checkers must be able to handle large
passenger volumes accurately andquickly. Automatic ticket gates were firstused widely in the 1970s, mainly by
private railways in the Kansai region. The
information on the ticket must bemachine-readable, so systems ofpunching holes and magnetic bar-code
systems were tried, but the final systemsettled on using a magnetic coating on theback of the ticket to store information.
Japanese ticket gates are set up so thatpassengers insert their tickets while
walking through the barrier. When thepassenger inserts a ticket on the near side,a belt carries it through the machine tothe point where the information is read.
After determining the ticket validity, themachine writes necessary information on
the ticket, and if the passenger requires
the ticket for further parts of the journey,another belt carries it to the far side of thebarrier to be taken by the passenger. If
the ticket is invalid, a barrier blocks theway, preventing the passenger frompassing. In order to speed up passage
through the gate, two tickets can beinserted in quick succession. The
machines can also recognize and handle
commuter passes and SF cards by the size
and information stored on them.
Moreover, passengers can insert tickets
either face-up or face-down, forwards orbackwards.

JR East automatic ticket vending machine

Latest magnetic automatic ticket gates(JR East)

Japan Railway & Transport Review 24 • July 2000

Contactless IC Card System
The automatic ticket-checking systemdescribed above is a showcase of leadingedge technology, but has the following
problems:• Before adoption of automatic ticketchecking machines, passengers only
needed to show their commuter
passes to station personnel, but now
they must remove the pass from its
holder and insert it into the machine.
• Because the passenger releases theticket and picks it up at the other sideof the ticket barrier, passengers may
mistakenly take other people’s tickets.
• The high-performance machines costa lot of money and have many moving
parts, making maintenance very time
consuming.
• The tickets do not have a very highlevel of security. Since information isstored in a magnetic strip, anyone withspecialized knowledge can read (andchange) the stored information.

(JR East)

Copyright © 2000 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Design of contactless IC card

(JR East)

R&D on a new automatic fare collection
technology—the contactless IC card—
aims to resolve these problems. Thesecards have an embedded IC chip that canstore vast amounts of data. Since thesecards have their own data processing
functions, they are also called smart cards.
Ordinary IC cards have a contact that isused to transfer data, but contactless IC
cards communicate with the automatic
ticket-checking machine via anembedded antenna, obviating the need forcontact. This type of card allows
passengers to pass through the automatic
ticket-checking machine while holding
their cards. The card security is also vastly
improved, because third parties cannot
easily read the information contained inthem. And because they can store large
amounts of information, they can moreeasily be used to begin new businessservices as well as be put to non-railway
uses.
R&D mainly by RTRI and JR East on ticketchecking machines for contactless IC
cards has been underway since the JRgroup was first established in 1987.
Several prototype cards and ticket

Copyright © 2000 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Contactless IC card in field testing

checking machines have been made, andevaluated by JR East employee monitors
several times. The first real-life test wasin 1992 at Ueno Station. JR East went on
to develop ever more successful systems,
making it feasible to meet the stringent
requirements of Japanese railways. Thecompany plans to commercialize thecards in 2001. The automatic gates usedin tests can handle both magnetic tickets
and contactless IC cards. The newcontactless Super Urban Intelligent Card(Suica) combines a commuter pass and an
SF card into one. When a passenger travels
outside the section covered by thecommuter pass, the ticket gate
automatically calculates and deducts theexcess fare from the SF part of the card.
This enables replacement of the present fareadjustment machines that must be used topurchase a separate excess fare ticket.
Use of contactless IC cards will not only
make tickets easier to use, it will also
reduce the number of mechanical parts,
making automatic ticket-checking
machines simpler and reducing
manufacturing and maintenance costs.
Although some way off in the future,(JR East)

passengers will be one-day able to use asingle card to ride on trains and buses,
paying fares with electronic cash. This
type of system depends on reliability andsecurity and the contactless IC card is well
suited to this purpose.

Barrier-free Access
Most Japanese train stations cannot beaccessed without some verticalmovement. This is a huge impediment topeople with physical disabilities.
Moreover, many stations do not havesufficient room to retrofit elevators or
escalators without altering theconstruction of the building at great cost.
However, awareness of the need to createa barrier-free environment has increased
recently and subsidies from national andlocal governments have given a great
boost to station improvement. New typesof lifts have been developed for stations
where it would be impossible orprohibitively expensive to constructnormal elevators or escalators. The photoon p. 54 shows a lift that can be installed

Japan Railway & Transport Review 24 • July 2000

53

Technology

on stairs to carry a wheelchair up anddown. It is designed to fold away when
not in use, keeping out of the way ofpeople passing on foot. In addition, anescalator has been developed that canextend three steps horizontally flat if themode is changed, allowing wheelchairs
to be carried safely.
Another indispensable service forpassengers is information. Japan’s urban
railways have a mind-boggling number oflines and fares, sometimes confusing
people unused to the system who aretrying to figure out how much it will costto get to their destination as well as how
to get there. In addition, complaints are
sometimes heard that accurate
information is not given when there aredelays or other problems. Railways haveinstalled a variety of signboards andcomputerized display screens in responseto these problems, and various
improvements have been made, including
linking computerized display screensdirectly to the transport management
system, in order to provide information
instantaneously. And as the personal

Stair wheelchair lift

54

Japan Railway & Transport Review 24 • July 2000

computer makes its way increasingly into
the home and office, software is appearingthat calculates optimum routes and fares.
H o w e v e r, e v e n w i t h a l l t h e s e
improvements, information services arestill far from perfect.
Until now, all railway information was
only announced or displayed on screens;passengers have to listen to or view all
this information, and select theinformation relevant to them. This typeof system makes it nearly impossible toprovide the kind of attentive service thatwill gain passenger satisfaction. The best
choice would probably be to giveeveryone individualized guidance, but it
is not possible for station employees toattend to every passenger individually.
We feel it is necessary to develop
machines and computer systems that giveindividualized guidance with aconversational interface, even though they
may not function as well as a person. A
guide system for visually impaired people
is currently being developed by RTRI
(Figure 1). Since information is often
presented visually, people with impaired(JR East)

Latest computerized timetable display screensvision often have a difficult time getting
information. With this system, IC chips
programmed with location information
are embedded in tactile tiles used to markpaths for visually impaired people; thisinformation is read by a cane with anembedded antenna, and verbal directions
are given by a pocket-sized portablemachine. For instance, if the user tells
the device ‘I want to take a train to Tokyo’,the machine will guide him or her to theright platform by voice instructions. The
machine can also be used to inform theperson of their present location. We arealso looking into equipping the machinewith a wireless device that can pick up
information from trains and tell the userwhether to get on a particular train arriving
at the platform. We plan to continue ourresearch in order to extend this service toprovide personalized information topeople with other disabilities, and toordinary passengers as well.
A holistic approach to a barrier-freeenvironment is universal design—in thisconcept, barrier-free does not mean
providing facilities for specific types of(JR East)Copyright © 2000 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Figure 1 Guide System for Visually Impaired Persons

Voice

User information
Voice
recognition
Processor
Voicesynthesis

Audio
information

ReceiverRadio
Guide system for visually impaired persons(RTRI)

Canepeople, but instead aims to design stations
that are easy to use for everyone. Japanesetrain stations still have a lot of constructionand environment issues, but I think weare making rapid improvements in theseareas.

Tag

Tag reader

Tag

Transmitter

Tag

Information on
platforms, aisles, etc.

Information on
train, seats,
destination, etc.

Information on roads,
traffic signals, etc.

StationTrain

Road

Conclusion(RTRI)

This paper has outlined passenger service
technologies on Japanese railways. Theseservices are closely intertwined with new
information technologies, and thebreakneck pace of change will transform
railway passenger services in many ways.
Japan’s railway engineers are working tocontribute to society by making railways
even more passenger-friendly.
■Kanji Wako
Mr Kanji Wako is Director in charge of Research and Development at the Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI). He
joined JNR in 1961 after graduating in engineering from Tohoku University. He is the supervising editor for this series on
Railway Technology Today.

Koichi Goto
Mr Goto is Senior Engineer in the Transport Systems Development Division of RTRI. He Joined JNR
in 1980 after obtaining a Masters Degree in Information Science from Kyoto University. He co-authored

Railways and Computers (in Japanese), published by Kyoritsu in 1998.

Copyright © 2000 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Japan Railway & Transport Review 24 • July 200055