MARS, Current Condition and Approach for Development in the Future

J. Hayashi, K. Aoki, O. Shimizu

Railway Information Systems Co., Ltd. Tokyo,

Abstract The MARS 501 (Multi Access Reservation System 501) is a massive online real-time system that provides JR companies with reservation management, fare calculation, and ticketing and cancellation services for train seats. The first part of this paper presents the history of this system’s development. This is a history in which the system has adapted to meet current needs by expanding its scale to keep pace with the development of computer technology and enhancing its functions to enable automation of manual operations and by creating new added value based on information technologies. Next, this paper will describe the features of the current system known as MARS 501. This section presents the system components and an outline of the services provided. We then explain the MARS features of functions (such as high speed, large data capacity, high reliability, advanced seat management functions, multifunctional terminals, and data warehouse). This is followed by a description of the system configuration based on servers supporting these features and the high-security dedicated MARS network known as JR-NET. Finally, this paper presents our recent steps toward future MARS development (expansion of online service time, more flexibility in responding to the needs of JR companies, support for ticketless travel systems). This paper also describes our approaches to issues that MARS is expected to encounter increasingly in the future, such as sustaining MARS processing performance, improving uptime, and optimizing operating costs.

1. Introduction

1.1 MARS Service Area Railroad lines in Japan cover a service distance of approximately 27,600 km. Of this total, a service distance of 20,000 km is operated by the Japan Railways Group. This Group was formed from the privatization and splitting of Japan National Railways (JNR) into six companies in 1987. The sales areas of the companies in the Japan Railways Group are shown in Fig. 1. MARS manages the reservations for reserved seats in bullet trains, Limited Express, and Express trains (including some buses) operated by JR. Our company (Railway Information Systems Co., Ltd.), which develops and operates MARS, is also a company that was split off and privatized from JNR. Each JR company sells tickets for sales areas of other companies in addition to tickets for its own sales area. Many JR trains are also operated over two or more JR sales areas. One major service of our company, therefore, is the creation of fare adjustment data for this mutual sales and providing it to each JR company.

1.2 History of MARS In June, 1959, Japan’s first online seat reservation management system known as MARS 1 was developed and tested by JNR and installed in . The history of system upgrades until the development of the current MARS 501 is shown in Fig. 2, and the expansion of scale is shown in Fig. 3. Today, system development of MARS still continues each year for incorporating improved functions.

Fig. 1: The sales areas of Japan Railway Group companies

'60 '65 '70 '75 '80 '85 '90 '95 '00 '05

Tokaido Shinkansen Sanyo Shinkansen Joetsu extended to HAKATA Yamagata Kyushu opened Shinkansen MARS 1 Sanyo Shinkansen opened opened JNR SPLIT AND Shinkansen Shinkansen PRIVATIZED opened opened World Expo in OSAKA Tohoku INTO Trial MARS 101 Shinkansen JR COMPANIES opened

Seat reservation MARS 102 system in use. Automatic ticket printing. MARS 103 Non-reserved ticket Fare ticket MARS 104 MIDORI-NO-MADOGUCHI (JR reservation ticket office) open MARS 105

MARS 201 MARS 202 Credit card JR Rental Car 'MR‘ type terminal JAL ticket Group MARS 150 reservation

Reserving by MARS 301 MARS 305 Touchtone phone VTX MARS 501 'M' type Commuter Pass terminal

Hard wired logic programmed by software different platform (OS, etc) Unified Operating platform Unified into High-spec Magnetic Core Memory Mainframe Machine used by each sub-system Mainframe machines Fig. 2: The history of MARS upgrades 4000 #### #### #### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### #### 0 0.03 0.031.80.03 0 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.7 0.7 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 90001 13 83 83 83 83 467 467 467 770 770 950 950 ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### 8400 1.6 8000 other type tickets 1.4 7000 1.2 6000 reserved seat ticket 1.0 5000

0.8 number of terminals(right axis) 4000 0.6 3000

0.4 2000

tickets sales per day (million) 0.2 1000 0.0 0 '64 '65 '70 '75 '80 '85 '90 '95 '00 '04 Fig. 3: The expansion of scale of MARS

2. MARS 501 Features

2.1 Overview

2.1.1 System Components

(1) Center system The MARS 501 center system consists of multiple mainframe computers, a large number of UNIX servers/PC servers, large-capacity hard disks, and other components. The functions of the center system are listed below.

- Reserved seat management and fare calculation - Editing of information printed to tickets, sales management of terminals, creation of fare adjustment data, and supply of statistical data - Input of sales data (train data, etc.) - Interlinking with external systems (such as the systems of credit card companies and travel agencies)

(2) Terminals The following types of terminals are connected to the MARS center system for providing a wide range of services to users.

- Terminals selling tickets at JR Reservation Ticket Offices (known as “Midori-no-madoguchi”) and other locations (staff-operated terminals and customer-operated terminals) - Terminals displaying vacant seats for indicating availability on each train at stations and other locations - Onboard portable terminals for assisting ticket examination by conductors within trains - Management terminals for providing sales results data for management divisions and for registering train data to MARS

(3) Network The dedicated MARS network connects the center system and terminals. This network is called JR-NET. JR-NET is operated by the Network Operations Division of our company, which is a type II telecommunications. The lines from each terminal to the JR-NET access point are digital data lines of type I telecommunication carriers (such as NTT) or lines owned and maintained by each JR company. Originally, packet communication was primarily used, but growing support for IP in recent years has led to the replacement of 9.6 kbps X.25 connections in terminal communication systems with 64 kbps IP connections.

2.1.2 MARS Main Operation Functions A list of the main operation functions provided by MARS is shown below. Detailed descriptions of each function are provided in subsequent sections.

Operation function Explanation Offering to Reserved seat Assignment and cancellation of seats Ticket office terminals (JR, management travel agencies) Touchtone phone, Internet1 Reference of seat maps and seat availability Ticket office terminals (JR, travel agencies) Onboard portable terminals Internet1 Management terminals (JR Management Division)

1 JR ticket reservation service operated by our company for Cyber Station members

Operation function Explanation Offering to Reservation Seat reservations and ticket reservations Ticket office terminals (JR, management Management of the multiple travels required for travel agencies) a single trip Internet Management of group reservations Ticket office terminals (JR, travel agencies) Fare calculation Calculation of fare and charge Ticket office terminals (JR, travel agencies) Issuing and Ticket printing (including IC card-type tickets) Ticket office terminals (JR, cancellation of tickets Automatic cancellation (reading of magnetic travel agencies) data on ticket) Credit card payments Terminal accounting Management of daily sales of terminals management Statistical data Accumulation of MARS transaction results in a Management terminals (JR management data warehouse Management Division) Providing of results data to JR companies Data processing systems for JR companies Sales data input Input of train data for managing reserved seats Management terminals (In- Input of fare data for selling tickets company system)

Table 4: List of the main operation functions

2.2 Features of System Functions This section describes the features of MARS 501 system functions.

2.2.1 Large Transaction Volume In order to sell reserved tickets, MARS manages the reservation statuses for a large number of reserved seats. MARS can handle reservations for a maximum of 10,000 trains. Seat information for up to 1,000,000 seats per day can be handled. The actual number of trains managed is about 8,700 trains (as of February 2006). This figure is larger than the actual number of trains that have reserved seats and that are running in a single day. This is due to the fact that trains that are not running everyday must still be registered in MARS in order to sell reserved seats in advance. The number of terminals connected to MARS is roughly 9,000. The average transaction volume per day of MARS is shown in Table below.

Call volume Approx. 5.00 million calls Total tickets sold Approx. 1.70 million Reserved tickets Approx. 600,000 Sales volume Approx. 7.0 billion yen (Dec. 2005 results) Table 5: The average transaction volume per day

2.2.2 High-speed Processing MARS processing traffic varies according to the season. The demand for JR reserved tickets is particularly high during summer vacation (O-bon), the end and beginning of the year, and Golden Week (first week of May). Normally, sales of reserved tickets start at 10:00 AM one month before the travel date. Therefore, around July 13 each year (one month before O-bon vacation begins) at exactly 10:00 AM, there is a surge in requests for train ticket reservations from system terminals of travel agencies and ticket offices around the country. Also, one feature of MARS processing is that, for instance, if a reserved seat is sold with a ticket office terminal, a ticket can be obtained by sending a single request of information to the center system. Specifically, when the ticket office staff sets the request information on the terminal screen (departure and arrival stations, train, travel date, number of passengers, seat class, and other information) and presses

the “Send” key of the terminal, the center system handles this as one “transaction” and performs searches and assignments for the train seats, calculation of fares, editing of the items output to the ticket, and other processes. Finally, the terminal prints the processing results to the ticket. MARS must be capable of stable processing of a large volume of requests. (See Table 6.)

Maximum number of calls processed per second 207 calls Average terminal response time 5 seconds (From sending of signal until first ticket starts to be printed) (Results from Dec. 5, 2005 10:00-10:02 AM) Table 6: MARS Processing Performance

2.2.3 High Reliability MARS is the only means of purchasing JR reserved tickets, and so if MARS operation were to be down, JR would be unable to sell reserved tickets. Therefore, the designed value of uptime for MARS is extremely high. To attain this, the devices comprising MARS have been designed with redundancy using a variety of methods. (The redundancy methods and applied status are described in detail in “System Configuration”.) As a result, MARS uptime from the terminal end is over 99.99%.

2.2.4 Advanced Seat Management Function The MARS seat management function has two basic main features.

- Management of reservation status in sectional units Normally, trains stop at several stations before stopping. In MARS, the reservation status of sections before and after the train stops along the route can be managed separately. As a result, even if a certain seat in a train is reserved by someone from the starting station to a station before the final stop, another passenger can make a reservation for the remaining sections of the route for enabling the efficient sale of the limited resources of reserved ticket inventory. On the other hand, if a passenger requests a reserved ticket that crosses over multiple sections, MARS will process the request by overlapping the reservation status of all sections that are used for finding the vacant seat. (See the figure below.)

Station A B C D

Reserved status of a several seat 0 0 1 (Reserved) (Reserved) (Vacant) A ~ B A ~ C NO(Full) A ~ D Results for new requests are, B ~ C B ~ D C ~ D YES(Available)

Fig. 7: Example of processing on reservation status in sectional units

- Assignment of multiple passengers in grouped seats If two or more passengers wish to travel together, making a request by setting the number of passengers in the terminal enables MARS to assign grouped seats. For instance, if a request for four seats is made after some seats have already been sold, as shown in the figure, MARS finds available seats by matching grouped seating patterns for four people into the actual seat availability. This pattern search function supports searches for two to six people. If available seats cannot be found using the pattern search, a reply of ‘NO’ (full) is sent back to the terminal. In actuality, however, reservations may still be possible in separated seats. To support this,

there is a request option of “allow separation”. In this case, MARS has a function that assigns the closest possible seats.

A pattern Available search is seats. made for seat availability in this order.

Available seats were found using this pattern.

Fig. 8: Example of searching process for a 4-person request

A wide variety of other options are also provided for supporting sales policies of JR companies operating trains. (For example, assigning passengers to seats as far as possible from each other in trains with low ridership and limiting the number of seats assigned to passengers using special discounts.) These options enable flexible settings on the train data by train operating companies.

2.2.5 Various Ticket Types In addition to reserved tickets, MARS can sell a variety of other ticket types. The main types of tickets are shown in Table 9..

Category Type Explanation JR Limited express Most basic reserved ticket. A fare ticket and Green car ticket can tickets reserved ticket be combined into a single ticket. Limited express non- This ticket enables passengers to sit in non-reserved seats of reserved ticket Super Express (Shinkansen), Limited Express, and Express trains. Fare ticket Normally, only these tickets can be used with local trains. Round- trip and series type are also available. Regular coupon tickets Fare tickets sold in multiple quantities and discounted. Platform ticket This ticket allows the holder access to the platform, but not to board a train. Commuter pass A work commuting and school commuting type are available. Some types also allow usage of Limited Express and Super Express trains. Special program ticket These tickets designate the area and train and are cheaper than normal tickets. Many of these tickets designate the seats. Excursion ticket This discount ticket enables the passenger to use any train or bus freely with a zone designated by JR. This is a combination ticket from the departure location to the zone. Non-JR Car Rental ticket Reservation ticket for the JR station rental car service. tickets Event ticket Event (such as baseball game or concert) admissions ticket or access ticket for facilities. Airline ticket Airline ticket for major Japanese air carriers (domestic only) Hotel coupon Hotel coupon (voucher) for hotels and other facilities managed by the JR Group partner inventory system. Others Credit card sales slip Receipt for purchase of ticket by credit card Receipt Receipt Table 9: The main types of tickets handled by MARS

The section below shows a number of images of specific tickets. Shaded tints are printed on genuine tickets for preventing forgery. Two types of printing systems are used: Thermal transfer system and thermosensitive system. Recently, the print quality of the red color in the thermosensitive system has improved, and so printing is shifting to the thermosensitive system because of its superior ease of maintenance. On the back side, magnetic data is encoded for scanning by automatic ticket gates and ticket office terminals.

Tipical Reserved Seat Ticket in English Tipical Fare Ticket in English

Super Exp. (1st class) with Fare Ticket Single Ticket for Two Trains

Commuter Pass (valid for Super Exp.) Excursion Ticket (ex. Hokkaido Zone)

Event Ticket (ex. Tokyo Disney Land®)

Fig. 10: Examples of Ticket

2.2.6 Fare Calculation Because each JR company performs mutual selling, MARS is capable of calculating charges and fares over multiple JR companies using different operational regulations. This function also incorporates a number of special case processing functions for calculating the fare charges of tickets based on each company’s sales system. In addition, this function is also used to determine the title, station name, route, period of validity, and information stipulated by the sales system (such as “no stopover permitted in the City zone shown above”) printed on the ticket, and the information in the magnetic data encoded on the rear side of the ticket.

2.2.7 Multifunctional Sales Terminals In addition to the regular selling of reserved tickets, ticket office terminals have the following features for rapidly processing passenger requests and preventing mistakes by sales staff.

- Alternative Sales When a requested train is full, a “NO” reply is returned and the seat availability for different trains that depart from the same station or an adjacent station and go to the destination station during time periods before and after is displayed at the terminal. This enables the passenger to receive information about the availability for other trains. In addition, a reserved ticket for the train can be purchased immediately by selecting one of the displayed suggestions.

- Obtaining reserved tickets for multiple trains in one transaction Passengers have to change a number of trains to reach their destination. In this case, a search is made for connecting trains at the ticket office terminal and multiple train reservation tickets can be purchased in a single transaction. An example of a staff-operated terminal at a ticket office is shown in Fig. 11. When train in the top section is entered for the request data for the train at the bottom section of the screen, the center checks the connecting trains, and then selecting a train with available seats from the reply screen automatically enters the connecting train information. This function enables the station attendant to avoid going to the same reservation ticket sales screen twice and issuing separate tickets for each part of the journey or disposing of tickets that were already issued due to one train being full. An example of the customer-operated terminal screen is shown in Fig. 12. By simply selecting the departure and arrival stations, travel date, and number of people, the terminal automatically finds the connecting stations from the connecting patterns and displays the train combination patterns on the screen.

Fig. 11: Example of a staff-operated terminal Fig. 12: Example of a customer-operated terminal

- Route Search At the sales clerk terminal, the same data used in commercially-available timetables is used to provide information about trains and routes to a destination. When the ticket agent sets and issues the departure and arrival stations and the departure date and time, the screen as shown in Fig. 13 is displayed. This screen shows multiple available trains and their required times. In this way, this function can provide information about local trains and non-JR trains in addition to trains with reserved seats. When a fare ticket is sold at a ticket agent terminal, the route from the departure station to the arrival station is shown on the screen to enable sales for JR stations and line zones nationwide. However, this variation is extremely large. Therefore, several representative route possibilities are displayed, and selecting routes that match the request from these possibilities enables setting of routes on the fare ticket request screen.

Fig. 13: Example of Route Search

- Automatic Ticket Cancellation When canceling a reserved ticket, accidentally canceling can result in selling of a seat reservation that another passenger had already purchased, resulting in double booking. In full trains, there are no replacement seats, and so double booking leads to extremely low customer service. In response, MARS has a function that automatically cancels reserved seats. The automatic cancellation screen at the ticket office terminal is opened, and the reservation ticket to be cancelled is scanned to the ticket printer. This scan is used by MARS to identify the seat position based on the magnetic data and makes it available for selling. At the same time, to show that the scanned reservation ticket is invalid, the magnetic data is invalidated, a hole is punched in it, and a red cancellation mark is printed on the surface.

2.2.8 Terminal Accounting Management and Income Settlement The center system manages daily sales at a terminal. This information is used when the station attendant verifies the accuracy of cash at the ticket office. This information is also stored in the data warehouse and used for analysis of sales.

2.2.9 Ticket Sales Channels Other Than Ticket Office Terminals Besides JR Reservation Ticket Offices, MARS reservation tickets can be reserved and purchased using the following methods.

- Touchtone Telephones Reservations can be made to major trains by following the audio instructions with a touchtone phone. The customer must pay for the ticket by the pick-up period at a staff-operated terminal or at a customer- operated terminal at a JR Reservation Ticket Office or other location.

- Onboard Mobile Terminal The onboard mobile terminal supports the operation of the train conductor within the train. The conductor can use this terminal to find out the latest sales status of reserved seats on the operating train. This information is updated within 5 minutes when a reserved ticket is sold with MARS. The conductor can use this terminal to view this information and verify the ticket of the passenger sitting in an unsold seat or guide passengers who prefer a reserved seat on the train to available seats. This terminal is also provided with a function for reserving seats. The MARS center system and this terminal use the wireless network provided by mobile phone companies to make a connection. To ensure security in the event of unauthorized access or loss of the terminal, the transmission messages are encrypted and authorization is performed to disable access by unregistered terminals.

- Internet and Mobile Phones Each JR company is currently building reservation and purchasing systems that support Internet and mobile phone usage. In these systems, MARS receives the reservation request from the company’s system and makes the seat reservation. The ticket purchase is processed at the JR Reservation Ticket Office corresponding to the reservation/purchase, but in most cases, the ticket is received by simply inserting a registered credit card into a customer-operated terminal.

2.2.10 Results Data Supply Function The results data indicating how much a certain train has been sold and how much a certain terminal has sold is stored in a data warehouse by MARS. The available search period is the past 13 to 27 months. The Management Divisions of JR companies use their management terminals to access this information, or they can process the data provided in statistical format by MARS using their systems to perform sales analysis.

2.2.11 Sales Data Input Function Based on sales analysis and other data, JR companies register new product information (such as train data) in MARS. Much of this information is provided in writing from the JR companies. Of this information, the function for inputting train information is implemented as a WWW-based application in the management terminals to allow the Management Divisions of JR companies to register data directly.

2.2.12 Remote Control of Reserved Seats Sales In the case of disasters or other events, the sale of reserved tickets may be cancelled. In MARS, the person in charge at a JR company can designate a train or area directly from the management terminal and cancel or reopen sales of reserved tickets. This person can also increase the number of reserved tickets available according to the selling conditions of reserved seats.

2.3 System Configuration The system configuration used to realize the features of functions mentioned above is described here. The MARS 501 center system consists of many subsystems. (See Fig. 14) These subsystems are divided for handling highly independent logical functions, and so MARS 501 easily enables change and addition of functions and realizing of high reliability.

2.3.1 Mainframe for Supporting High-speed, High-reliability Seat Reservation Functions The seat reservation management subsystem at the heart of MARS is situated in a large-scale versatile host machine. In the development plan of the MARS 501, a server-based design was also studied for providing cost optimization. Currently, however, servers are unable to provide the functions, high speed, and reliability required for MARS. Therefore, the seat availability reference function and other functions where reservation data is not updated were separated and built based on servers. The seat reservation subsystem has a double configuration with online and stand-by capability. If the online subsystem should

Conductor- Mobile- MARS 501 CENTER SYSTEM support phone terminals network PRMS ODMS JNMS DWHS

Staff- operated PTMS FCMS TKMS TDMS JR- terminals NET (IP) CTMS TIMS MBDS DDEM Customer- JR- Management NET terminals operated (IP) terminals DDTM Mainframe

CCS SRS PGS MJSS Open seat display MSSS terminals RSS

Telephone MICS Touchtone network phones DMS JM MOPS PC (‘Cyber Internet Station’) ERCS ETS CS Operation terminals

Credit card Travel Air carrier's System Agencies’ reservation authorization JERRS MTS JCOS network terminals Systems Systems

CCS : Communication Control Subsystem CS : Credit System CTMS : Customer Terminal Management Subsystem DDEM : Db server for Dampyo data Entry Management system DDTM : Db server for Dantai management Terminal Management system DMS : Data Management Subsystem DWHS : DWH management Subsystem ERCS : Eki Rent a Car Subsystem ETS : Event & Theme-park Subsystem FCMS : Fare Calculation Management Subsystem JCOS : Jr COoperation Stock control system JERRS : Japanese Eki Rent a car Reservation System JM : Journal Management JNMS : JourNal Management Subsystem MBDS : Mars Basic Data management Subsystem MICS : Mars Integrated Contorol System MJSS : Mars batch Job Scheduling System MOPS : Mars integrated OPerating System MSSS : Mars System Support Server MTS : Message Transmission System ODMS : Origin Destination Management Subsystem PGS : Proceeds Gathering Subsystem PRMS : Portable Radio terminal Management Subsystem PTMS : the Person in charge Terminal Management Subsystem RSS : Reservation & Settlement Management Subsystem SRS : Seat Reservation Subsystem TDMS : Train Data Management Subsystem TIMS : Train Information Management Subsystem TKMS : Tokubetu Kikaku jousyaken Management Subsystem

Fig. 14: MARS 501 Subsystem Configuration ever become disabled, the stand-by subsystem, which has a hot stand-by structure that constantly runs the programs in stand-by, quickly takes over operation. This restart requires one to three minutes.

2.3.2 UNIX Server Group Supporting Fare Calculation and Terminal Operation Processing In MARS 501 development, while the subsystem which updates important data such as the reservation status of seats and reserved travel information is realized through usage of a large-scale versatile host machine, the subsystem that primarily performs data reference or that performs data updating but is capable of load balancing is constructed based on servers. One such typical system is the fare calculation subsystem. It consists of two high-performance UNIX servers where both systems are constantly processing in a load share structure, and they are capable of continuous service unless multiple faults were to occur. The terminal management subsystem consists of three to five UNIX servers configured so that if a server were to become disabled, the remaining servers automatically share and take over the terminal transactions that were being processed by the stopped server.

2.3.3 Usage of PC Servers PC servers are used for subsystems that have simple system functions and redundant configurations to provide reliability and for subsystems that support management division operations of JR companies because of their superior cost performance and their ease of use with distribution package applications. In particular, FEP (front end processor) servers are used between the center system and terminal to perform protocol conversion and connection management, and WWW servers are used to create train data and provide data warehouse reference functions to management terminals.

2.3.4 High-security Network JR-NET is the network used by MARS to connect to terminals nationwide in Japan and is operated by the Network Division of our company. JR-NET is a dedicated MARS network, and it is physically independent from the Internet and other external networks for providing high security. Within JR-NET, QoS control is performed, and online business transactions (transactions that exchange data with the center system when a ticket office terminal makes a sale) are logically separated from other transactions for providing high quality and security. Besides address management and packet filtering by a router, terminal authentication is implemented using digital certificates for connections from management terminals that use a WWW architecture to prevent unauthorized access. The development network within the center system is also a network independent from this dedicated network and external networks to prevent unauthorized access to MARS through this route.

3. Recent Approaches to Future Challenges

3.1 Expanded Sales and Operating Times In addition to providing services to conventional ticket office terminals, more and more services are being provided on the Internet. As a result, the daily service of MARS 501 has been extended by 2 hours 30 minutes for starting 22-hour service from 4:00 AM until 2:00 AM the next day. This was accomplished by shortening and revising operations that were previously conducted during the night when service was stopped, and so the testing environment was expanded together with enabling high-speed processing. For the future, study is proceeding on implementing 24-hour continuous operation for seat reservations, fare calculation, and other services.

3.2 Flexible Responses to Sales Strategies of JR Companies MARS used to be based on the assumption that all companies would be provided common services. Recently, however, large differences in the sales strategies and target customers of JR companies have emerged. For this reason, in its development, MARS 501 was built as a “logical MARS for each company” : although MARS is the shared asset of all JR companies, each JR company can use it as if it were their own and can perform flexible customization based on their sales strategies. As a result, today, a number of new individual systems by companies based on MARS 501 are currently under consideration for development.

3.3 Support for Ticketless Travel With the widespread usage of automatic ticket gates, conventional paper tickets are becoming replaced by IC card-type tickets. East Japan Railway and West Japan Railway are already proceeding with conversion to IC card-type fare tickets and commuter passes. In addition, recently, services have also started that support IC chips embedded in mobile phones and other devices as tickets. In this situation, IC card support for terminals is also proceeding in MARS. Further and broader support for IC technology in reserved tickets and other tickets is also positively considered in a few years.

3.4 Cost Optimization In MARS 501, functions that were implemented before with large-scale mainframes were shifted to servers for cutting hardware costs. At the same time, a new function was built for integrating and controlling functions distributed over a number of devices for reducing system operation costs. We will realize further cost optimization by assessing and verifying the feasibility of the latest information technology, and introduce it to MARS.

3.5 Continued Sustaining and Improving High Speed and High Reliability MARS is an extremely important system for JR as a comprehensive passenger sales system and became as a vital infrastructure in society. With higher performance designs for terminals, higher speed networks, and exchanging of large quantities of data with terminals, the processing performance requirements of this system continue to grow. Therefore, while paying close attention to costs, we will continue to strive to sustain and improve reliability and performance.

Acknowledgements We would like to express great gratitude to all the people for their help and cooperation in creating this paper.