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Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

aruarian.dance

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Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#111

Post by lxgr »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #109
lxgr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you really want to speed how people go through the gates, then _remove the damn gates_. That comes with other problems. Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is valid or not. I've seen tourists get in trouble with ticket inspectors at least once in a very unpleasant way for simply having pressed the wrong button at an inscrutable tic…

> Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is valid or not. So do the validators that are put in waiting areas, inside the trains, etc. in cities with no gates. That you can literally use at the time you want to use them (waiting for the train, inside the train, etc. ) , rather than forcing a bottleneck to everyone. > As others have already…

How would removing the gate improve latency in a scenario where every passenger still has to tap their card at some reader?

Sure, you could spread the readers out a bit better across the platform etc., but that significantly weakens the "impossible to accidentally evade the fare" UX, as it still allows people to forget to tap when rushing for a train.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#112

Post by lmm »

bemmu wrote: post #23
lhl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's about equal for utility - Japanese Suica/Pasmo cards are also usable in every single konbini, at all the stations stores, across most regional transportation and taxis, and at maybe half of Tokyo shops/restaurants (it's a default option in AirPay and other PoS systems). A lot of vending machines accept Suica, and I use it at grocery or drug stores. You can even use it at some other types of shops like Bi…

I seem to have managed to live in the only place in Japan where you can’t use suica/pasmo for transport: Tokushima. Still works in convini though.

Tokushima Bus is apparently introducing IC card support next year.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#114

Post by lmm »

0xCMP wrote: post #29
TheChaplain wrote: post #14

I love IC cards. They had them on all transport where I live, but a few years ago they changed to QR codes.. Now it's a fiddle with an app, then try to get the right angle on a smudgy reader. Getting onboard takes much longer and it feels like technology sent us 2 steps back instead of forward. IC cards are better, and if they could be integrated in the phone then it would be even better and faster for everyone.

iOS supports ICs fine. It has supported Suica since 2017 when I used it instead of the physical card. Forcing use of an app and QR codes does seem like a significant step back, although I guess it makes paper tickets much easier to implement with the same scanner.

The IC card companies got too greedy unfortunately - along with phones not supporting NFC-F if they're not designed for the Japanese market, the readers are also expensive. With various subways starting to introduce credit card contactless payment I suspect it's only a matter of time before IC cards go away.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#115

Post by AshamedCaptain »

lxgr wrote: post #111
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is valid or not. So do the validators that are put in waiting areas, inside the trains, etc. in cities with no gates. That you can literally use at the time you want to use them (waiting for the train, inside the train, etc. ) , rather than forcing a bottleneck to everyone. > As others have already…

How would removing the gate improve latency in a scenario where every passenger still has to tap their card at some reader? Sure, you could spread the readers out a bit better across the platform etc., but that significantly weakens the "impossible to accidentally evade the fare" UX, as it still allows people to forget to tap when rushing for a train.

Many cities already have this. Most street trams have already this. Even London has no gates for the non-central stations. I tap either when I'm waiting for the tram, or when I'm literally already inside it. Even with only one validator and at rush hour, there's no queue.

If you already live in an area where there are no gates, would you make the argument that "I need gates so that I don't forget to tap"? Put yourself in my shoes: you would laugh at the idea.

And it doesn't need mentioning that people who want to intentionally skip fare can do so, gates or not.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#116

Post by aecsocket »

socalgal2 wrote: post #68

I think I must be mis-understanding something > Since there's no point in generating keys for a device which will not be used in Japan, non-Japan SKUs don't have Osaifu-Keitai functionality. AFAIK, all iPhones from all regions since like iPhone 10 (internet says iPhone 7) support Osaifu-Kaitai unless I don't understand what that means. My USA iPhones works everywhere Suika, Pasmo, Icoca, etc work. Every station, bus,…

Author here, this is my fault for not proof reading this part properly! The part about non-Japan SKUs is generally true for Android phone manufacturers, but Apple eats the cost and gives all phones Osaifi-Keitai. You do not need to root an iPhone to get this functionality, even on a non-Japan unit.

I will write a correction for this section to clear up the confusion.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#117

Post by emursebrian »

I just got back from Japan. I did not notice a difference in performance between tapping with a Blink credit card and tapping with an IC card. I only used the ICOCA card. There were never lines at the gates. There were only ever brief lines at the ticket counters and terminals. I was there during golden week, which is one of the busiest travel times of the year. My travel partner and I used almost exclusively public transportation to get around, usually riding a few trains per-day. We only experienced one two-minute delay in Tokyo on a Friday evening during rush hour.

Japan's transportation infrastructure is great!

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#118

Post by lmm »

makeitdouble wrote: post #16
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If I had to ask “why is it so fast?” I’d turn it around and ask “Why are western systems so slow?” and posit that Western capital has an ideology that throughout matters by latency doesn’t. (As Fred Brooks puts it, “Nine women can have a baby in one month”). As an individual or a customer you perceive latency directly though, and throughout secondarily. So it comes down to empathy or lack thereof.

Another angle: mass transit is seen at best as a cost center in the west, when it's more expected to be a fully profitable business in Japan [0] Paris adopted an IC system as well and it is pretty usable, but not pushed to the extremes of the JR system because they weren't ready to invest as much, manage the money aspect and really make it a full blown business. [0] some lines and areas are definitely money pits. Tha…

Japan hugely subsidizes public transport both directly and indirectly, e.g. almost all employers will pay for employees to commute by public transport but not by car, because the government heavily incentivises them to do so. The Japanese transport providers are indeed more entrepreneurial about this kind of stuff, but I think that's more a case of Japan having high trust in government and quasi-governmental entities than expecting them to pay their way. (Indeed a lot of the penny-wise pound-foolish decisions we see in western public transport are driven by an insistence on cutting costs at all, well, costs).

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#119

Post by lazide »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #105
aikinai wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison video is kind of pointless since they're both at very slow times. If you see a Tokyo gate at rush hour with people packed wall-to-wall but moving quickly, that's what the latency was optimized for. And as others have mentioned, it's two things, speed and distance. FeliCa triggers both faster and farther away. And it never errors; you just made up that assumption. Also in Japan no one walks up to the ga…

What you are describing is exactly all the problems with gates. Having them open-by-default improves somewhat. Having 100ms less reading time improves nothing. You are still limited by the speed of everyone else (cultural aspects are irrelevant as they are not improved by reader tech). If you want to improve entry throughput, have _no gate at all_ so that people do not have to bottleneck there. If you really have to…

And where would you put it? Anywhere you can think of would just be another (usually narrower) bottleneck.

In most stations, every available inch of width is used for these ‘gates’, and people move at a walking pace through them except for when people screw up. It’s a remarkably effective system.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#120

Post by AshamedCaptain »

lazide wrote: post #119
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is exactly all the problems with gates. Having them open-by-default improves somewhat. Having 100ms less reading time improves nothing. You are still limited by the speed of everyone else (cultural aspects are irrelevant as they are not improved by reader tech). If you want to improve entry throughput, have _no gate at all_ so that people do not have to bottleneck there. If you really have to…

And where would you put it? Anywhere you can think of would just be another (usually narrower) bottleneck. In most stations, every available inch of width is used for these ‘gates’, and people move at a walking pace through them except for when people screw up. It’s a remarkably effective system.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44014412 to merge discussions.
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