Development of a reserved seat ticketing system

Abstract

The East Japan Railway Company has begun operating Chuo Line trains where seats in all cars are reserved. This reflects the diversifying needs of the railway's customers. To go with this, it has also created an online system for selling reserved seats in real time. In this paper I will primarily discuss the reserved seat ticketing machines the East Japan Railway Company has installed on its platforms. Two major points concerning this development will be discussed : 1) assuring system reliability and 2) improving processing speed. The system uses a networks to sell reserved seats and during its development the researchers emphasized real-time processing when they addressed system and equipment quality improvement. In the first month of operation 100,000 such tickets were sold, and response from customers has been favorable.