AFC market in transportation market in Asia Pacific

1. Automatic Fare Collection in Transportation in Asia Pacific
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Automatic Fare Collection and its significant in Urban Rail
3. Automatic Fare Collection Overview
3.1 Bangkok City
3.2 Jakarta City
3.3 Ho Chi Minh City
4. Conclusions
Analysis by Ralph Yew email : etyew@hotmail.com
All right reserved

2. 1.0 I n t r o d u c t i o n
United Nation recently released its global report mentioning that 60% of world
population will be living in urban cities. Thus the global economic activities ranging from
industrial production to services are going to be based in big cities. The improvement of
the city population per capita income has led to need for greater mobility and movement
as seen in the new urban rail public transportation services witnessed in megacities
across ASEAN, China and India.
Government and transportation agencies around Asia Pacific are spending huge
amount of monies to improve urban rail infrastructure. Many has adopted new mode of
payment for the transit for speed and efficiency. Thus, the technology of automatic fare
collection ( AFC) is important in shaping and accelerate the passenger clearance in all
the metro and train station around the world each day.
2.0 Automatic Fare Collection and its significant in Urban Rail
AFC is a new technology which is improved from the old system of magnetic-stripe
paper ticket issue by human operator to vending type machines issuing either RFID chip
based PVC tickets or chip-based token combined with the ticket checker in form of
turnstile or electronic gate typed checker.
The AFC helps to improved rail passenger ridership experience and services with few
interruptions and saves time. Major cities like Shanghai, Seoul, Hong Kong and
Singapore have rail passenger ridership exceeding 1 billion each year and it is
impossible to rely on bank notes and coins.
Analysis by Ralph Yew email : etyew@hotmail.com
All right reserved

3. AFC technology like Ticket Vending machines issuing Chip based Cards, Token based,
,
all play a key role in improving service efficiency and reducing risk in areas such as
fraud and poor revenue collection for the urban rail operators
operators.
3.0 Automatic Fare Collection Overview
3.1 Bangkok
The SRT operator is expanding its metro network in Bangkok and AFC is part of its
requirement.
Analysis by Ralph Yew email : etyew@hotmail.com
All right reserved

4. 3.2 Jakarta
Jakarta Metro is building its first elevated mass transit ( MRT ) to start in 2012 and AFC
growth potential is likely here.
3.3 Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh with its 4 new lines of LRT will certainly allow for AFC implementation in a
big way.
4.0 Conclusions
The use of Smart Card in Urban Rail transportation has taken off quite well in Asia
Pacific. Most countries have implemented some form of automated fare collection (AFC)
and electronic toll collection (ETC). Japan is perhaps the farthest ahead of the crowd,
with a very mature contactless Smart Card ticketing system. Beginning from mass
transit railways, each railway line has its own pre-paid. The smart card system such as
the SUICA, TOICA, ICOCA and so forth. Cross compatibility agreements between
railways have been implemented , hence making it possible for passengers to cross the
country with only one or two mass transit cards. Furthermore, utilization of these cards
has extended to retail outlets within the vicinity of the railway stations; hence the card is
used as a pre-paid electronic wallet currently with auto reloads capabilities. Aside from
Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan seem to be on the fast track in this
direction, with allowing acceptance of such cards at quite a number or retail outlets and
are slowly introducing acceptance of such cards in other areas such as restaurant, fast
food chains, as well as leisure and entertainment outlets. In ASEAN, on the other hand,
countries such as Malaysia and Singapore have begun rolling out pre-paid mass transit
Smart Card acceptance devices in retail outlets. While Singapore has successfully
rolled out acceptance devices in many fast food chains, Malaysia has achieved success
in acceptance devices in car parking lots in shopping centers across the country. In
Bangkok, as three mass transit lines are currently in place, will soon extend directly to
the Suvarnabumi Airport, its expected the mass transit card uptake and utilization to
increase significantly.
Analysis by Ralph Yew email : etyew@hotmail.com
All right reserved