Recently, some railway companies have introduced new Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) systems using contactless IC cards in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Other railway companies in the Kansai area also have plans to introduce the IC card ticket systems. It is thought that contactless IC cards will become a key technology in Japanese AFC systems. The services offered by the current IC card systems, however, are based on a conventional business model and do not utilize the full bilities of the technology. In this paper, we discuss a new business model of railway ticket systems and present passenger-oriented ticket services utilizing the high performance of the IC cards. One is an adaptive method to calculate fares according to the services actually provided for passenger and the other is a new seat reservation system that can offer more flexible and sufficient seat management for passengers.

Copyright (c) 2002 Railway Technical Research Institute