Keisei Electric Railway will introduce a new service, “Skyliner e-ticket Face Check in Go,” from January 24, allowing passengers to ride the Skyliner using face recognition. The aim is to alleviate congestion by eliminating the hassle of purchasing and exchanging tickets at station counters and vending machines, targeting inbound tourists.
In the new service, when purchasing tickets on the online reservation site “Skyliner e-ticket” for inbound tourists, users can register their photo by taking a picture with a smartphone or PC camera. When face recognition is performed on tablet terminals installed at ticket gates at boarding stations, tickets for the next departing Skyliner are issued on the spot, allowing passengers to board without queuing at counters or vending machines. At the destination station, automatic ticket gates cannot be used; passengers must present their ticket at a manned counter to exit.
The face recognition system utilizes a platform provided by Marubeni, and according to a representative, the time from face recognition to ticket issuance is about 4 seconds per person. If tickets for multiple people are purchased together, all tickets are issued with a single face recognition process.
The initial target stations are Keisei Ueno Station, Nippori Station, Airport Terminal 2 Station, and Narita Airport Station, with one face recognition-compatible ticket gate installed at each station. Although Aoto Station and Shin-Kamagaya Station are not currently included, Keisei Electric Railway is considering expanding the target stations and sections based on future usage conditions.
While efforts to use face recognition for boarding are being undertaken by other operators such as JR West and Kumamoto City Transportation Bureau, Keisei Electric Railway claims that this is the first attempt by a domestic railway operator for trains with reserved seats.
With the recovery of inbound demand after the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of Skyliner users is on the rise. Previously, when reserving a ticket with the “Skyliner e-ticket,” it was necessary to exchange it at the station counter, causing congestion at some times at stations such as Ueno Station, Narita Airport Station, and Airport Terminal 2 Station.
While Keisei Electric Railway was considering a new boarding system to alleviate congestion, Marubeni introduced the face recognition platform in February 2024, leading to the decision to introduce face recognition boarding in June of the same year. By combining Keisei Electric Railway’s existing seat reservation system with Marubeni’s platform, the introduction was achieved in about half a year from the start of the project.
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This article was generated using automatic translation by GPT-4 API. The translation may not be accurate.
