A new system to prevent passengers from cheating fares with train passes, a scam that has cost East Japan Railway Co. an estimated 7 billion yen in annual sales, seems to be working, the company said Tuesday.
The system, introduced at the end of March, prevents passengers with commuter passes from purchasing the cheapest fare to get through ticket gates and then leave using their passes instead of paying the full fare. The process allows ticket barriers to tell whether a pass was inserted at stations within its designated route.
A survey conducted by the company last year showed only about 10 percent of passengers with passes purchase the correct train fares. The total number of minimum fare tickets purchased last month decreased year-on-year from 16.7 million to 14.3 million, down 14.4 percent. "It does not mean all of these passengers who buy the minimum fare are cheating," said Yoshio Ishida, head of JR East's Tokyo branch. "But you can say that more people are beginning to buy the appropriate train tickets."