So I get to the office this morning, and a colleague of mine says, “Did you hear about that thing with the turnstiles?” Since I don’t take the train to work, I hadn’t. But wow:

Trouble arose in over 400 stations on JR, subway, and private rail lines first thing in the morning on 12 October when electronic ticket gates failed to function after being turned on. To avoid massive headaches, nearly every station adopted the measure of allowing passengers to pass through the gates without checking tickets. This is the first time such large-scale trouble with automatic ticket gates has spread to multiple rail carriers. For a time, some private rail lines had no functioning ticket gates at any station, but they gradually began restoring service. Trains themselves have been running normally.

…

According to one private rail source, the trouble was confined to ticket gates manufactured by a single maker. All affected companies are scrambling to restore service while investigating the details and origins of the problem.

As you’ve no doubt seen in stock news footage designed to show how crowded Tokyo is, a LOT of people use the trains here on weekday mornings. I’m not sure how much revenue the rail companies lost–most people who are commuting to work use some kind of rail pass, usually paid up for a period of months rather than on a per-ride basis. But the manufacturer of the electronic turnstiles may have some explaining to do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 21:55 and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.