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The story
According to Yomiuri Shimbun Online, Osaka Metro has settled on a policy to abolish magnetic tickets by fiscal year 2031, switching to tickets printed with QR codes instead. The move is driven by the fact that magnetic tickets frequently jam ticket gates, requiring costly manpower and maintenance. Osaka Metro has already installed QR-code-reading gates at every station and plans to make them compatible with paper tickets as well. Reactions on the 5ch thread were mixed — some posters expressed understanding of the cost-cutting rationale, while others reminisced about the history of magnetic tickets, worried about QR codes being duplicated or misused, or raised concerns about an increase in paper waste.
Published 9/9 (Wed) 7:49 AM — Yomiuri Shimbun Online
Osaka Metro has settled on a policy to abolish magnetic tickets by fiscal year 2031. Because magnetic tickets tend to jam ticket gates and require costly manpower to manage the equipment, gates that accept magnetic tickets will be replaced with QR-code-compatible machines.
The abolition policy will be included as a “next-generation ticketing service” in a new mid-term management plan to be compiled soon. In place of magnetic tickets, the company is considering issuing tickets printed with QR codes at stations. Osaka Metro has already installed gates at every station that let passengers pass through by holding up a QR code displayed on a smartphone, and these gates will also support the new tickets.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
https://youtu.be/AkBDpHERajc
JR East was the one who led the charge switching to QR tickets, though?
In Osaka it's PiTaPa. Suica technically works too since it's compatible with ICOCA, but you can't use auto-charge with it.
Mobile stuff just breaks out of nowhere… My phone's battery swelled up and died this summer. Well, I did use it for 4.5 years…
My cheap Chinese phone has bad touch response, so I prefer physical cards and tickets.
Those huge ticket gates are packed full of magnetic reading equipment inside. A QR reader just needs a camera. Get rid of magnetic reading and the gates could get slimmer, letting them install more of them.
They'd trained station staff to handle some maintenance themselves to cut costs, but that just shifted the burden onto the staff — so scrapping magnetic tickets entirely is the real fix.
Any machine breaks down at its moving parts first. The mechanism in current automatic ticket gates that feeds the ticket through takes a huge amount of effort and cost to maintain. Just having people hold up a QR code eliminates all that. Reader cameras are dirt cheap generic parts used in tons of stores and devices already.
The current magnetic tickets date back to 1971 (Showa 46). Before that it was the barcode-style ticket from Re: #85, which only automated entry.
The hassle of recycling used magnetic tickets is also pushing things away from magnetic media — they really need to move on from it. If anything, a QR hard-card ticket seems more feasible; once it's QR, the thickness of the ticket stops mattering at all.
Well, the general public is dumb, what can you do.
If an IC tag can read where you got on and off, that might actually have a shot.
Man, I wish they'd hurry up and let us get chips implanted in the back of our hands.
…If so, isn't that going to be incredibly annoying?
If you don't get it, just read the article. Suica works exactly the same as before.
They're only changing the paper tickets — magnetic ticket → QR-code-printed ticket.
Denso holds the patent, but they don't collect licensing fees, so no, they're not making money off it.
QR codes win hugely on system update costs. IC card systems cost a ridiculous amount just to update, to the point that some regional railway and bus companies end up dropping IC card support entirely when it's time to renew. Even JR is moving in the direction of keeping Suica and the like while switching just the paper tickets to QR.
Why not go try it on the Yui Rail? You won't resolve your doubts unless you actually go do it.
The QR code gets invalidated the moment you enter the gate, so even if you copy it, it only works once.
They're already doing that too — this is a measure aimed at people who stubbornly refuse to use credit cards or IC cards.
Mechanical parts are exactly what causes breakdowns. I constantly see them cracking open the magnetic reader to repair it.
Eliminating that drive mechanism to cut maintenance costs is the whole point.
It's a structural problem, so there's nothing to be done about it. With magnetic tickets, the mechanical parts — rollers sucking the ticket in, reading it, then rollers spitting it back out — inevitably need maintenance, and jams and other trouble are bound to happen.
Elderly people especially would be better off buying tickets through an app and passing through with face recognition.
Don't worry, some young person in line behind them will call out 'Shimura, look out behind you!' (a classic TV catchphrase for warning someone of danger behind them) to help.
Well, if you start worrying about that, self-checkout registers at every supermarket wouldn't work either.
Background and key points of this discussion
Magnetic tickets have been in use since their introduction in 1971, with Kansai private railways adopting automatic ticket gates early on as a way to cut labor costs. This latest move isn’t about eliminating paper tickets altogether, but about resolving the maintenance burden caused by wear and breakdowns in the moving parts that feed tickets through the gate. Since QR-code reading only requires a generic camera, some in the thread pointed out that it’s far cheaper than updating an IC card system. JR East has already led the shift to QR tickets, making Osaka Metro a relative latecomer here. The thread also showed some misunderstanding, with comments like “what if your phone breaks?” — but as the article states, IC cards like Suica will continue to work exactly as before, and it’s easy to overlook that only the paper magnetic tickets are being changed. As for concerns about QR codes being duplicated, the system handles that by invalidating the code the moment you enter the gate.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread “Osaka Metro to Abolish Magnetic Tickets by FY2031… Switching to QR Codes.”
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