In the previous issue, I wrote about how the information written on paper tickets and IC cards when they pass through an automatic ticket gate may affect the error judgment at the time of exit. Even if the ticket itself is valid, depending on how it is used, there is a possibility that an error judgment will be made. In this article, I would like to continue this story and discuss something a little more complicated.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine that there would be so many cases of people coming to Yamagata with an 18-kippu ticket and using a Shinkansen e-ticket to enter without leaving the station. In other words, it is not cheating, but it is irregular.
When boarding the “Tsubasa” train from Yamagata Station, passengers first pass through a conventional train ticket gate, and then through a ticket gate for transferring between conventional and Shinkansen trains (this pattern is surprisingly common at Shinkansen stations). However, even on the Yamagata Shinkansen, there are no transfer gates at intermediate stations such as Takabatake and Yonezawa. Thus, the conditions for going through the ticket gates are different at each station. The “Shinkansen e-Ticket” has prerequisites for each station, such as the order in which passengers must pass through the ticket gates at each station, and if the prerequisites are not met, the ticket will be determined to be an error.
What actually happened was that I took a conventional train back to Yamagata using the “Seishun 18 Ticket” and went to the Shinkansen transfer gate without exiting the ticket gate. When I touched my mobile Suica registered in the “Shinkansen e-Ticket” to the automatic ticket gate, I received an unceremonious error message.
Using the “Seishun 18 Ticket,” I traveled north from Tokyo on the Tohoku and Ou Main Lines to the Sakasawa Line. However, it was already evening when I reached this point. Since it was a one-day trip, I had reserved seats on the Yamagata Shinkansen “Tsubasa” for the return trip to Tokyo. However, instead of a paper ticket, I used the ticketless service “Shinkansen e-Ticket”.
I’ve had the experience of hearing that an error decision was made because the visitors didn’t enter in the order they were supposed to.”
Was the order of passing through the ticket gates affected? In the case of Himeji Station
Some cases are a bit more complicated. This time, the stage is set at Himeji Station. Here, as in Yamagata, when boarding the Shinkansen, passengers must first pass through a ticket gate for conventional lines, and then go through a ticket gate for transferring between conventional lines and the Shinkansen.
He then had a ticket for the Sanyo Shinkansen train from Okayama to the Tokyo metropolitan area. However, the schedule called for a stopover in Himeji to take the Bantan Line.
The Bantan Line is included in the ICOCA area. Therefore, the ticket for using the Shinkansen is once exited by getting off at Himeji on the way to the train. Then, re-enter with Mobile Suica for a round trip on the Bantan Line. Then re-enter with the original ticket and take the Shinkansen back to Tokyo (you may wonder why I did such a complicated thing, but I will explain the reason another time).
However, I got stuck at the last place. I went to the ticket gate for transferring between conventional lines and the Shinkansen with my Mobile Suica, which had an admission record within the Bantan Line, and my Shinkansen ticket/express ticket. After inserting the Shinkansen ticket into the automatic ticket checker, I touched the Mobile Suica, and an error message “no settlement possible” came up.
When you have a paper ticket for the section of the Shinkansen and use an IC card for the conventional lines before and after the Shinkansen, the procedure is as follows: “First, enter with the IC card for the conventional lines. Then, at the transfer gate of the Shinkansen station, after inserting the Shinkansen ticket into the automatic ticket gate, touch the IC card and the fare for the conventional line will be deducted. Since this is a common operation, it would have been sufficient if only the fare for the Bantan Line had been deducted.
I had no choice but to make a U-turn and use my Mobile Suica to go through a conventional train ticket gate. Then, I used the ticket for the Shinkansen train that I had stopped on the way and went through the ticket gate for the local line, and then fed the ticket and the Shinkansen express ticket together into the automatic ticket gate machine at the ticket gate for the transfer from the local line to the Shinkansen. This was a reversal of the outward journey, which naturally went without a hitch.
There are two possible reasons for this behavior. Either the Bantan Line was not included in the “conventional line fare deducted from the IC card,” or there was an inconsistency in the entry/exit records on the Shinkansen ticket. My personal guess is that the latter was more likely.
Due to the structure of Himeji Station, when a passenger comes by Shinkansen and exits outside the rachis, he/she goes through both transfer and conventional line ticket gates. Then, it is thought that a ticket with an entry record of a stopover can be made at both ticket gates. If this is the case, it is assumed that when re-entering the station after a stopover, the passenger must first pass through a conventional train ticket gate, followed by a transfer ticket gate.
Therefore, if you go directly from the Bantan Line to the transfer ticket gate, you will have to insert a ticket that has no entry record at the conventional line ticket gate into the automatic ticket gate machine at the transfer ticket gate. This would not be consistent with the entry/exit information, so an error judgment must have been made.
When doing something complicated like this, we were told that we should enter and exit by the same route both ways, and that we should not take shortcuts in a temper tantrum.
© Source travel watch
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