Tokyo Metro Co. says it has a plan to make the complex subway system easier to use and is offering passengers free data for an app contest with a ¥1 million prize to help that happen.
"We'd like to encourage (participants) to come up with applications that will be useful to people who regularly use the Tokyo Metro subway and to foreign visitors, as Tokyo will be hosting the 2020 Summer Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics," the subway operator said in a statement Tuesday.
In addition to timetables and details on barrier-free stations, Tokyo Metro will also start providing new information, such as nearly real-time data on the location of all trains, alerts on delays, origin and terminus information for each train, and ways to discern which firm a train belongs to.
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