Kenzy’s YouTube digests are wonderful little insights on mobile ticketing and transit trends from a real world transit user perspective. His latest makes a good case that 2024 is the year that Shinkansen eTicketing will go mainstream.
I agree. JR East aims to have a 70% Shinkansen eTicket usage rates by 2025. Suica and PASMO usage rates for regular transit in the greater Tokyo area are well over 90%, but Shinkansen travel has remained a paper ticket bastion despite the convenience of Eki-Net (JR East/West/Hokkaido) and EX (JR Central/West/Kyushu) Shinkansen eTickets linked with Suica and other Transit IC cards, options that have been available since 2008. Kenzy outlines how the last barriers keeping users from migrating to Shinkansen eTickets with Suica have disappeared.
- Group/family eTicket support: When eTickets first appeared in 2008, only the account user could purchase and use an eTicket. Eki-Net Shinkansen eTicket (since 2020) and smartEX (since 2017) both support up to 6 trip eTickets bought and managed with one account.
- Station to Station flexibility and Reward Points: Shinkansen paper ticket area to area fare(anywhere inside the Tokyo 23 wards, etc.) vs mobile ticket station to station fare might seem like an advantage, but paper tickets lock the user in the instant they enter the trip start gate. No getting out at Tokyo station to do a little shopping along the way for example, is impossible. The area to area fare advantage has also disappeared, any Eki-Net or EX Shinkansen reserve seat eTicket gets you at least a ¥200 discount over paper Shinkansen tickets, and advance reservations offer bigger discounts. When you factor in JR East JRE POINT or JR Central EX POINT eTickets rewards ranging from 5%~8% of the fare, paper tickets are a waste of money.
- Easy Ticket Refunds and Changes: Paper Shinkansen tickets can be bought online but the majority of refunds or changes require a trip to a JR ticket office, which are being eliminated at rapid pace. eTickets are far easier to refund or change online. Take the case of the recent Noto Earthquake. JR East announced that all online eTickets would be refunded in full automatically, but paper tickets refunds would only be given at ticket offices.
Last but not least, the last big paper ticket advantage is falling away: the JR Group is eliminating Shinkansen~Limited Express transfer discounts that offered great value when Shinkansen and regular Limited Express tickets where bought as one trip. The transfer discount disappears March 2024 when the new timetables go into effect. The last of the old JNR era ticketing rules that were complex but also offered all kinds of local travel discount goodies to feed Shinkansen traffic, are finally going away.
All of this matches my own observations at Shinkansen gates, regular users use eTickets because that’s where the discounts and point rewards are, the shift to mobile ticketless travel will only accelerate and drive integration.
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