241–250 of 302 posts
> A lot of this is thanks to FelicaDude (Reddit, Twitter), an anonymous internet stranger who disappeared a few years ago but seems to have a lot of knowledge about how FeliCa works. I can't verify any of this information, but it makes sense to me; and anyway, there's no way someone would lie on the internet, right?
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That's only enabled by the difference in culture though, right? Japanese culture has a much higher emphasis on order and following the rules - I don't know that this "open-by-default" system would work in, for instance, the US.
Japanese transit-using society is old and middle-class; those are the kind of people who follow rules. Americans are often more rule bound than Japanese people (we have HOAs and Nextdoor), but we just don't respect transit systems as much because we think of them as gifts we give to the poor/mentally ill/homeless. And then a lot of Americans have an anti-gentrification ideology ("rent-lowering gunshots" or "neighborh…
> And then a lot of Americans have an anti-gentrification ideology ("rent-lowering gunshots"
I think the ideology is in the parent comment. I ride lots of public transit and don't hear or see these things. The largest American public transit system, in NYC, certainly isn't seen as a gift other than by New Yorkers to themselves.
FWIW, I've seen American transit systems that let people board without even being asked to pay. I've seen plenty of bus drivers wave through people who couldn't pay. On one bus a teen boarded and walked straight to their seat. The bus driver, in an authoritative parental voice, kept summoning them to the front. There they lectured them: It's ok, but you need to talk to me first.
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Japanese transit using society is not all old and middle class: it’s pretty much everyone who is not filthy rich isn’t it?
Old meaning not young. Pretty much all crimes or any other forms of messy behavior worldwide are committed by young men. But the median age in NYC is 38 and Tokyo is 45. (source: two Google searches I just did). That means a lot! It's true they don't jump the gates often and they don't have loud panhandlers. Instead the societal transit ills are passed out drunks, suicides and molesters. (Not meaning these actually h…
Pretty much all?
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Japanese transit-using society is old and middle-class; those are the kind of people who follow rules. Americans are often more rule bound than Japanese people (we have HOAs and Nextdoor), but we just don't respect transit systems as much because we think of them as gifts we give to the poor/mentally ill/homeless. And then a lot of Americans have an anti-gentrification ideology ("rent-lowering gunshots" or "neighborh…
I had never noticed it like that but now I’m dead. When I moved to my current neighborhood I asked why there was no public transportation and someone said it was so poor people couldn’t be around and I hadn’t connected this to the wider culture.
I had long ago pointed out to them that much of the bike infrastructure connects wealthy neighborhoods with wealthy neighborhoods.
What really stands out is the difference in design philosophy. In London, the gates are normally closed and only open if your Oyster card is valid. In Tokyo, the gates are open by default and only close if your card fails. You don’t have to wait for doors to open and close every time—it just keeps the flow moving and feels way faster.
That's only enabled by the difference in culture though, right? Japanese culture has a much higher emphasis on order and following the rules - I don't know that this "open-by-default" system would work in, for instance, the US.
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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.
I thought transport companies are the ones doing IC cards? (True for Japanese IC cards, except Pasmo)
Well, a number of smaller transport companies are turning away from IC cards citing the cost of the equipment. I don't know at which point in the stack the greed is coming in - whether it's the IC committees, Sony with the underlying technology, some other player or all of them at once - but it's happening. JR East can probably sustain Suica for decades but you'll notice they've been making a hard push into traditional credit cards and banking; they've seen which way the wind is blowing.
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as for the uk train stations, the temperatures are in part due to their age - London Underground was built in 1870s, and since that time rocks accumulated so much heat that it is extremely difficult to maintain human-friendly temperatures. Japan subway is 70 years younger, so it’s easier for them to maintain temps. (And my hometown Warsaw subway is even younger - 50 years, and we don’t have AC whilst temperatures are…
What does that mean, “rocks accumulate heat”? Should be an even cool temp down there, as long as tunnels aren’t too deep. A few vents to allow hot air to rise should work, no?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling#Sou...
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Yes that is correct. Patents hold it back on Android. Apple just got themselves a licensing deal that apparently lets them just have it on all phones.
I think it's more like difference in commitment to product and sales model between Apple and every other phone manufacturers. Apple really commits deeply into making singular globally unified phones and rejecting pressures to make carrier branded bastard children of iPhone. None of Android phone manufacturers are as committed - even Google - and so unnecessary features gets removed from non-Japanese phones, even the…
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USA has Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and AmEx. Each of which try to entice their customers by offering better rewards programs. Though AmEx isn't taken everywhere (notably Costco) and Discover is hit and miss as well.
The rewards programs are the anti-competitive lock-in. Visa and Mastercard charge high fees because their dominant market position forces merchants to accept them. Then they use part of the fees to bribe customers with rewards programs. A new payment network doesn't have leverage against merchants so can't charge the same high fees and therefore can't offer the same rewards programs, but then they can't get consumers…
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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…
The funny thing about Japan is they have this wonderful universal IC card, but not everywhere accepts it, some accept only it, some only accept cash, some only cash or physical credit card, some only QR (PayPay), so you end up needing to carry several methods, and one of them is paper and coins!
For Japanese payments, what's far worse is that so many shops and chains continue to have point systems that require their own point cards (and even the ones with apps seem to have awful slow UIs, at least on my iPhone).