Comment by pknomad
12 hours ago
It's not only magically fast, but it's super useful. You can use it at vending machines + convenience stores anywhere (unless it's one of those old ones that only take cash/coins and print paper tickets) and at the shops as well.
People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
I've used a Suica card for many years now. I agree it's both fast and reliable. One summer I was crisscrossing Tokyo by train over several days, using the Suica card, so I got to see a LOT of commuters. Lots of people were in a hurry and would run through the gates (the default state is open, it closes quickly if your card is out of funds or some other problem). Running through the gates while quickly touching the card to the reader. I've done that a couple of times myself.
It's also useful in that you can pre-order a Shinkansen ticket, for example, and link that purchase to your Suica card, which you then use for the Shinkansen gate. If there are other fees (which there may be) they're just deducted from the money the card holds, as usual. Makes everything very simple.
For me a physical card is easier than using a phone. A phone is so much larger so I would need to get it from a pocket somewhere, while the Suica card I can keep in my jeans pocket or some other easy place.
It was funny during Expo in Osaka on the massive metro station - you could just zip in with the suica, while the less knowledgeable foreign tourists would form long queues in front of the special gates where they could pay by a payment card, which were glacialy slow in comparison.
I also did prefer my plastic Pasmo (essentially the same as suica) card until I learned during my last trip, that it can only be recharged with cash :-/
This doesn't especially bother me, but it is a kinda funny workflow to go to an ATM to withdraw cash (with your bank card) only to immediately put it back into the machine (to charge your IC card).
You can create digital Pasmo and charge it through mobile wallet.
> People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
In Prague city transit does not have limiting gates. If you bought unlimited ticket, you just walk in bus/tram/metro and that is it. No touching, scanning, showing, nothing. Maybe once a month (or even rarer) you might encounter a patrolling controller who would ask you to show your ticket, but that's it.
Same in Berlin. I think the reasoning is that it'd cost more money to fit ticket gates compared to loss of revenue from fare evaders.
Makes for such a smooth journey as most people are doing the right thing.
> If you bought unlimited ticket
And that's the difference. IIRC, you have to periodically top up your Suica card with money which then gets deducted from the balance each time you use it.
In Europe, there is no such thing - sure, you can buy a lot of single ride tickets and then use them when you need to, but you have to stamp the ticket when you start each ride, which does seem a little more inconvenient.
I much prefer convenient over fast, being able to just tap my phone's uploaded IC card/alipay without having to open it up or switch cards is maybe 200ms slower, but I don't have to think or change what I'm doing. Plus with alipay it will just autodeduct so I don't ever have to think about that as well, though Apple wallet Suica makes it easy to reload too.
JRE required Suica to be instantly accessible so there's a setting in Apple Wallet to set a card to a default quick transit use card(forgot the exact name). If configured as such, just poking the gate antenna with earpiece end of an iPhone instantly completes the transaction just as fast as a real card does.
(yes, the antenna is in the top FaceID/Dynamic Island area, Osaifu Keitai spec requires a □つ icon wherever antenna is located, which Apple managed to completely ignore)
a setting in Apple Wallet to set a card to a default quick transit use card
Because it's not the easiest setting to find: Settings/Wallet & Apple Pay/Express Transit Card
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FWIW on Android, Google Wallet tells me "Transit Cards: These cards never require verification", and indeed I can just wave my phone at the terminal without unlocking it.
And here I was all this time double pressing power button to open wallet like a fool. The more you know.
Is this different to Express Mode, which has been a thing for years for all kinds of cards (including car keys)?
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This is a consequence of the world being eaten by managed code. IBM made POS checkout terminals that were blazingly fast 40 years ago. Now every modern data processing technogy is glacial by comparison.
The story makes clear that constraints matter. Product teams build against specified constraints. If latency isn’t one of them, they’re going to sacrifice it if it helps meet the defined requirements more quickly and cost-effectively.
Every time I see a shoddy piece of work, I know which constraint was sacrificed.
Alipay in China for transit and pay is also easy. No card, just a QR on your phone. It can even be a screenshot of the QR code.
QRs will always be so much more cumbersome than blindly tapping a card or your phone.
Agreed. It also requires that you unlock your phone.