Ticketless Service Various Types of Ticketless Service On the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen lines, there has been “EX-IC,” which uses a dedicated IC card for EX reservations and a credit card, and “Smart EX,” which allows the use of a transportation system IC card on hand. The area will be expanded to the Kyushu Shinkansen from June 25, 2022. Meanwhile, the “Shinkansen e-Ticket Service” has been introduced on the Tohoku, Hokkaido, Joetsu, Hokuriku, Akita, and Yamagata Shinkansen lines. All of these services require passengers to touch their IC cards when passing through ticket gates. The “EX-IC” service is based on the use of a special IC card, but other services use the transportation system IC card in your possession. Each transportation system IC card is assigned a unique ID number, which is registered with “Smart EX” and “Ekinet” to link the card to the user. Automatic ticket checkers read the ID number to identify users who pass through the ticket gate.
Ticketless service is valid only on the Shinkansen. One of the differences between the paper ticket and the ticketless service is the section of the train that can be boarded. Paper tickets use a combination of a “boarding ticket” and a “limited express ticket,” of which the “limited express ticket” is from the station where you board the Shinkansen to the station where you alight. This is easy. On the other hand, the “Train Ticket” is a different story. For example, if you travel from Tokyo to Hakata, you will be required to purchase a ticket for the Shinkansen from the station where you board the train to the station where you alight. For example, even if a ticket is issued specifying “Tokyo → Hakata,” the ticket will read “Tokyo metropolitan area → Fukuoka City. This is because the ticket is valid only to stations in the “Tokyo metropolitan area” zone and stations in the “Fukuoka City” zone. For example, if one travels from Kaminakazato Station on the Keihin Tohoku Line to Takeshita Station on the Kagoshima Main Line, the former is included in the Tokyo metropolitan area and the latter in Fukuoka City. Then, you would enter Kaminakazato Station using a “Tokyo metropolitan area → Fukuoka City” ticket, and when you get to Tokyo Station, you would go through the Shinkansen transfer gates to board the Shinkansen. When you arrive at Hakata Station, transfer to the Kagoshima Main Line through the conventional line transfer ticket gate and get off at Takeshita Station. At this point, there is no need to pay separately for the fares between Kaminakazato and Tokyo and between Hakata and Takeshita. However, the situation is different for the ticketless service. In both cases, the ticket and the limited express ticket are included in the package, which covers only the Shinkansen boarding station and the Shinkansen alighting station. In the aforementioned example, the ticket is valid only from Tokyo to Hakata, but not before or after that. Therefore, the passengers would have to buy separate tickets for the conventional train lines before and after the Tokyo-Hakata route. Nowadays, however, you can use a transportation system IC card in major metropolitan areas.
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