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I live in Tokyo and use my Suica almost every day. Suica is very convenient because it makes entering station gates very smooth. I have a question: how do peopl

I live in Tokyo and use my Suica almost every day. Suica is very convenient because it makes entering station gates very smooth. I have a question: how do people enter stations in cities outside of Japan? I have never been outside of Japan, so I was curious.

klausa 1mo ago
Depends on where. Many cities have their own cards, that are used for transit only (so no vending machines etc., and no interoperability between cities), increasingly many places just let you use your credit card in place of the special transit card, some places (Germany, some parts of Scandinavia) don’t have ticket gates at all.
crote 1mo ago
In The Netherlands it is exactly the same, just from a different vendor and with different branding. Of course the "not invented here" mentality resulted in it being woefully insecure when it was introduced in 2014, and NFC tap-to-pay with credit/debit cards, smartphones, and wearables still isn't properly implemented. They now made the decision to completely retire the current RFID solution, because the chip vendor discontinued the lineup it relies on. Its replacement proprietary card is based on NFC tap-to-pay, so on top of terrible product compatibility during the transition period we're also getting a nice extra tap-in delay out of it.
pjc50 1mo ago
Most countries have a similar system in the most popular places. London Oyster may be technically not as fast but it's the same basic experience. The challenge in the UK is getting tap-to-pay through bank cards onto all the little local bus operators.
mailund 1mo ago
In Norway, the trains and subway don't have physical barriers, you just enter! You will get a fine if you are stopped in a random control without a valid ticket (although the controllers are apparently reasonably lenient if you can show that you usually have an active ticket and just happened to forget), but there's nothing physically stopping you from trying! I believe the reason is mostly historical (it wasn't deemed necessary when most of the system was built, and the later attempt to introduce the gates later failed for a bunch of different reasons)

klausa 1mo ago

Depends on where. Many cities have their own cards, that are used for transit only (so no vending machines etc., and no interoperability between cities), increasingly many places just let you use your credit card in place of the special transit card, some places (Germany, some parts of Scandinavia) don’t have ticket gates at all.

crote 1mo ago

In The Netherlands it is exactly the same, just from a different vendor and with different branding. Of course the "not invented here" mentality resulted in it being woefully insecure when it was introduced in 2014, and NFC tap-to-pay with credit/debit cards, smartphones, and wearables still isn't properly implemented. They now made the decision to completely retire the current RFID solution, because the chip vendor discontinued the lineup it relies on. Its replacement proprietary card is based on NFC tap-to-pay, so on top of terrible product compatibility during the transition period we're also getting a nice extra tap-in delay out of it.

pjc50 1mo ago

Most countries have a similar system in the most popular places. London Oyster may be technically not as fast but it's the same basic experience. The challenge in the UK is getting tap-to-pay through bank cards onto all the little local bus operators.

mailund 1mo ago

In Norway, the trains and subway don't have physical barriers, you just enter! You will get a fine if you are stopped in a random control without a valid ticket (although the controllers are apparently reasonably lenient if you can show that you usually have an active ticket and just happened to forget), but there's nothing physically stopping you from trying! I believe the reason is mostly historical (it wasn't deemed necessary when most of the system was built, and the later attempt to introduce the gates later failed for a bunch of different reasons)