Feature New Frontiers in Passenger Rail Introduction and Future Development of Suica Non-contact IC Card Ticketing System Akio Shiibashi new company started examining Suica, as well as well as some future plans Introduction development and testing of non-contact for the system. IC cards to provide user-oriented services East Japan Railway Company (JR East) is meeting future passenger needs. As part Outline of Automatic one of the six passenger railway of its medium-term business strategy, JR Ticketing System companies created at the privatization and East launched the New Frontier 21 plan division of the former Japanese National in which the company announced its Figure 1 shows the station ticketing Railways (JNR) in 1987 and it is the largest intent to actively introduce new system used by JR East. Basically, it is company in the JR Group. Its service area technologies, starting with information composed of a network of vending covers the eastern half of the main technology (IT). As a result, each of the machines and gates plus a back-office for Japanese island of Honshu and includes companies comprising the JR East group managing collected fares and performing Tokyo. The company carries some 16 started examining active introduction of remote monitoring. The vending million passengers each day over a route IT to its business. As one concrete machines are composed of ticket vending length of about 7500 km. example, JR East greeted the 21st century machines, card vending machines and JR East aims to provide its customers with by launching its leading-edge Super season ticket vending machines. There safe and reliable transport services based Urban Intelligent Card (Suica) non- are also fare adjustment machines near on its main business as a trustworthy contact IC card ticketing system on 18 the gates. In general, all the machines railway company. November 2001. This article describes are passenger operated. As one part of this concept, in 1987, the the development and deployment of After 1990, to eliminate the workload of manual ticket clippers at gates, JR East introduced a magnetic ticket and gate Figure 1 Automatic Fare Collection System system centred on lines in Tokyo Metropolitan Area. The system is now Fare adjusting machines (854) complete at some 340 stations with 3200 Data processing machines gates covering a radius of about 100 km Fare adjusting window around Tokyo. The 5 million or so commuters who use magnetic commuter passes to travel in the metropolitan area have become thoroughly familiar with this automated system in the 10 years since its introduction. Following the introduction of this Ticket vending machines magnetic ticketing system, new services (4551) such as stored fare (SF) cards were Automatic fare collection gate Card vending machines introduced from 1991. In this system, (3286 gates) (ordinal line) fares are debited from a prepaid magnetic SF card (called an IO Card by JR East). The customer inserts a prepaid card into Mars (1541) the gate on starting the journey and the fare is calculated and deducted automatically from the card when the card is inserted into the exit gate on completing the journey. This eliminates the inconvenience of buying tickets one at a time as well as problems with fare adjustments when travelling beyond the original fare destination for some reason. Cash counting machines As a consequence, the IO Card rapidly became very popular with passengers 20 Japan Railway & Transport Review 32 • September 2002 Copyright © 2002 EJRCF. All rights reserved. Figure 2 Non-contact IC Card System and annual sales currently stand at more Transaction Time Analysis than 20 million cards for a revenue of Conveyed automatically while walking about ¥60 billion (US$1 = ¥125). As the magnetic ticketing system developed in popularity, JR East started read judge write verify Process time examining development of a next- Magnetic 0.7 s generation ticketing system using non- Carriage 1,150 mm contact IC cards that could offer advantages of expanded functionality, lowered costs, and greater protection against ticket fraud. Hold in hand read R&D into IC card ticketing systems had judge already been started when JR East was detect verify established in 1987. authenticate Process time IC Card 0.1 s Development Concept of Communication area (IC Card & R/W) Non-contact IC Card 100 mm Ticketing System Examination of the concept of introduction of non-contact IC cards as Figure 2 shows the differences in Development of Non-contact passenger tickets soon showed that it transaction time between magnetic IC Cards would be practically impossible to ticket and non-contact IC card gate substitute such cards for the current systems. In the magnetic system, as JR East started focusing attention on the magnetic tickets in a single step. As a soon as the ticket is put in the gate, possibility of using non-contact IC cards consequence, it was realized that use of the ticket data is read, evaluated, for next-generation ticketing systems the current magnetic tickets would have written and verified in a series of four immediately after the company was to continue in parallel with development serial processes taking about 0.7 s. established in 1987. IC cards can be of the IC card system until the best By contrast, in the non-contact IC classified into contact and non-contact specifications for the system could be card system, first, the presence of the types, but when using IC cards for determined. card in the radio-wave field is tickets, the transaction must be Comparison with the current magnetic detected and the card is performed as the customer walks ticket system led to the establishment of authenticated. Then the data is read, through the gate, so the non-contact the following development concepts as evaluated, written and verified in type of IC card should be best. prerequisites for introducing a non- quick succession. In a feasibility First, JR East tested single non-contact IC contact IC card ticketing system. study, the company soon found that cards using medium-wave and quasi- • The new system must co-exist with these processes must be completed microwave frequencies to examine the current magnetic ticket system within about 0.1 s to prevent possible commercial applications. • The new system must be less passengers pausing momentarily in As a result, in 1992, it seemed that quasi- expensive than the current magnetic their progress through the gate. microwave non-contact IC cards with a ticket system Achieving this speed between the built-in battery looked like the best • The new system must have at least non-contact IC and gate reader/writer possible solution in terms of providing the same or better processing (R/W) was difficult using the available nearly satisfactory processing speed and performance and reliability as the technology at that time, and the most price. Three field trials (Table 1) were current magnetic ticket system important point was developing high- conducted in railway stations from 1994 • The new system must be able to offer speed transaction processing between onwards to evaluate whether the new added-value services the IC card and R/W. functionality reached the required levels. The development details are described Specifically, the trials examined whether below. the system reliability, gate processing Copyright © 2002 EJRCF. All rights reserved. Japan Railway & Transport Review 32 • September 2002 21 New Frontiers in Passenger Rail Table 1 Results of Field Test in JR East 1st Trial 2nd Trial 3rd Trial Third Field Trial 14 Feb 1994–15 Mar 1994 3 Apr 1995–2 Oct 1995 21 Apr 1997–25 Nov 1997 Test period (1 month) (6 months) (7 months) Outline 8 stations 13 stations 12 stations Test scale 18 gates 30 gates 32 gate For the third field trial of about 7 400 persons 700 persons 800 persons months between April and November Communication speed 70 Kbps 25 Kbps 250 Kbps 1997, two points were improved based Card movement Waving Waving Touch & Go on the results of the second trial. To Number of total 29,900 176,000 174,000 transactions reduce randomness in the positioning of the card, the position of the R/W Error rate compared with More than 20 times About 4 times Nearly equal magnetic card antenna field was clearly marked and the method was changed from simply bringing the card close to the R/W to performance, and card usability satisfied using a so-called ‘Touch and Go’ passengers’ needs. Second Field Trial method (Fig. 3). In addition, instead of using cards with internal batteries, Outline power was supplied to the card from First Field Trial The second field trial was held for 6 the R/W by radio-wave induction. months between April and October 1995 Furthermore, a new SF card function Outline to examine the remedies for the problems (called IO card) was added to the The first field trial was held for 1 month exposed by the first trial. There were three commuter pass function. in January and February 1994. To main improvements: communications at determine the user convenience, two shorter wavelengths, change in shape of Results and problems types of R/W were used: a horizontal radio-wave field to hemispherical, and The most serious pending problem of the type and a vertical type. faster communications speed. high error rate was immediately Additionally only the horizontal-type R/W improved to the same level as the Results and problems was tested based on the results of the conventional magnetic ticket system due The trial results showed that the previous field trial. to the high effectiveness of the Touch and processing performance between the Go method. non-contact IC card and the R/W was Results and problems Ignoring a few initial teething problems, unsatisfactory and the error rate The error rate improved to just four times the batteryless cards worked faultlessly preventing passage through the gate that of the magnetic ticket system.