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Many gates in Japan are open by default, and close if they detect someone trying to go through without tapping/inserting ticket/incorrect ticket. I'm not sure why it's not all of them though. But the whole system is built for speed/throughput. Smaller stations outside the cities don't have gates

Bi-directional gates are always open by default. One-way gate would close after a certain time to prevent people coming from the wrong side.

Maybe because I started my public transportation life in Japan I prefer gates to no gates

(1) it means people pay for usage. Someone going 20km pays more than someone going 1km since they have proof where you entered.

(2) it prevents more accidents/fines? - I had this happen to me in Paris, maybe because I was used to Japan. I was going to Paris Disneyland. I wrongly assumed I couldn't get there without going through a gate. I got on the subway, followed the signs in the tunnels to some train in Châtelet les Halles, was on the train, showed up at Paris Disneyland, was told I had to pay a 3x fine for not having the correct ticket. Or I could get on the train, go back to Paris, get the correct ticket, then come back (2hrs?) In Japan, for the most part, I couldn't have gotten on the train without a ticket and if I did go further than I paid can just adjust my fare at the end. No fines needed or imposed.

I find this a very thin argument, even thinner than the one coming from the authorities claiming rampant ticket fraud. I travel by train a shitton through all of Europe, and I have _never_ had the issue of boarding a train without knowing if I had a valid ticket for it. And even in the cities w/o gates there is some expectation that you will have to validate the ticket somewhere, at your leisure. Do you ever board street trams, for example?

For the record, I am French. I used to be proud that nothing physical prevented you from boarding a train you had no ticket for. But, IMHO sadly, people like me have lost, because now trains also have ticket gates in France, which means that I:

A) No longer can accompany my ailing relatives to their train seats if I don't have a ticket myself (/as I could twenty years ago)

B) No longer can board the train when all my hands are full with luggage (since I need a free hand to search for the ticket in my wallet/bags to go through the damn machine).

> I travel by train a shitton through all of Europe, and I have _never_ had the issue of boarding a train without knowing if I had a valid ticket for it.

Like I said, I was used to Japan. I couldn't have boarded a train without passing through a gate for which I would have needed a ticket. As pointed out above, that happened in Paris. At no point between the metro and the train was their any barrier preventing me from getting on the train without a ticket. Just a tunnel with labels directly to the train. Being used to Japan, I assumed therefore I could work out out at my destination since there wasn't even a ticket purchasing place that I would notice, between those 2 spots.

You need to remember, people who have not used your system (tourists) will have to make every mistake possible. I prefer a system that allows less mistakes as well as a system that lets me fix my mistake. You seem to prefer systems that require you to make a mistake once and get fined, and then learn how to use the system from the mistake.

Yes, slowing down native users of public transportation because of tourists is a big, popular movement in places like Paris. /s

To transform your argument: why do my partially-disabled relatives now need to walk by themselves to their train seats? Just so that people who don't even read the instructions do not make a mistake that is going to result in a slap on the wrist fine (if anything, cause few revisors are going to fine you if you look touristy enough) ?

The only thing I keep hearing is how having no barriers at all is just intrinsically better, and difficulties with getting used which such system look like very minor compared to the difficulties with moving from a system with no barriers to a system with barriers, not mentioning the disadvantages for users.

> Yes, slowing down native users of public transportation because of tourists is a big, popular movement in places like Paris. /s

This argument falls flat give Japan's transit is infinitely more efficient and handles far more people than Paris. No one is slowed down by Japan's system.

No, it is not. You simply cannot claim a gate-less system can be slower than one with gates. It is physically impossible, as you're literally removing the potential for bottleneck.

Your generic comparison is moot anyway, because in Paris the normal metro system has had barriers since forever. It is the regional train system which used not to have gates.

> In addition, the annoyance of these gates comes from having to fiddle with the wallet, etc. in order to find the card or the phone, or the fact that multiples tries may be required for the reader to actually read it;

The NFC readers on the gates in Japan will read cards from several centimeters away. My phone, which has Osaifu-Keitai setup, can be left in my bag and I just wave my bag over the reader as I walk by. It is incredibly rare for a misread to occur. They just work.

No, they don't. Even TFA itself points that the moment you have two cards in close proximity, the reader will read nothing (and he points this as if it was a feature). This is why I have to stop and take my cards out of the wallet every time I want to go in.

try these[1], they go between cards and prevent the one behind it from being read.

1: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%94%B9%E6%9C%AD%E3%82%A8%...

With regards to latency, in Paris the biggest hurdle to increase trafic is people. You can quite literally walk through like on the Japanese video linked. But the vast majority don't.

The way it's supposed to work is that if you pass your card while the gate is opened, it keeps the gate open longer.

In practice most people wait for the gate to close in front of them before reopening it.

I'm not sure why people do fgaf. I think the reason is that this makes you look like a fraudster going right behind a valid passenger.

I do wait because I'm sure that my ticket is validated, and therefore won't be fined by a controller. Sometimes the machine visual/sound signal is broken, so no way to be 100% sure.

Makes sense. I've already been controlled several times after validating through a broken machine without any issue. But yeah it looks like the tide is changing and they are starting to fine for their own faults.

> If you really want to speed how people go through the gates, then _remove the damn gates_.

That comes with other problems.

Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is valid or not.

I've seen tourists get in trouble with ticket inspectors at least once in a very unpleasant way for simply having pressed the wrong button at an inscrutable ticket vending machine.

> I don't understand -- we are talking about 100ms or so of latency? which is almost completely dwarfed by any mechanical action such as the gates actually opening??

As others have already said, Japanese gates are open by default, and are more of a user interface indicator (to you and potentially station attendants nearby) than an actual physical barrier. You could step over or between the "barrier" that extends when the gate rejects your payment pretty easily in most, but it would be very obvious that you're skipping the fare.

> Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is valid or not.

So do the validators that are put in waiting areas, inside the trains, etc. in cities with no gates. That you can literally use at the time you want to use them (waiting for the train, inside the train, etc. ) , rather than forcing a bottleneck to everyone.

> As others have already said, Japanese gates are open by default

And this by itself already makes more of a latency difference than the entire IC card system does. Imagine what removing the gates altogether does.

How would removing the gate improve latency in a scenario where every passenger still has to tap their card at some reader?

Sure, you could spread the readers out a bit better across the platform etc., but that significantly weakens the "impossible to accidentally evade the fare" UX, as it still allows people to forget to tap when rushing for a train.

Many cities already have this. Most street trams have already this. Even London has no gates for the non-central stations. I tap either when I'm waiting for the tram, or when I'm literally already inside it. Even with only one validator and at rush hour, there's no queue.

If you already live in an area where there are no gates, would you make the argument that "I need gates so that I don't forget to tap"? Put yourself in my shoes: you would laugh at the idea.

And it doesn't need mentioning that people who want to intentionally skip fare can do so, gates or not.

Different transit systems have different user experience, yes.

> would you make the argument that "I need gates so that I don't forget to tap"? Put yourself in my shoes: you would laugh at the idea.

Yes, I'm making that argument. I've lived in places that don't have transit gates for the majority of my life, and I absolutely forgot buying a ticket a few times (since I usually have a monthly pass).

Being reminded about a monthly pass having run out by the gate, automatically charging for a single ride (if I have enough balance) so I can solve the problem later, is great UX.

The comparison video is kind of pointless since they're both at very slow times. If you see a Tokyo gate at rush hour with people packed wall-to-wall but moving quickly, that's what the latency was optimized for. And as others have mentioned, it's two things, speed and distance. FeliCa triggers both faster and farther away. And it never errors; you just made up that assumption. Also in Japan no one walks up to the gate and then fiddles with their wallet. Everyone knows proper transit etiquette from when they're very little.

Sometimes people will be low on balance and get rejected. People reroute quickly in normal conditions, but in rush hour that'll be a huge mess and everyone will be pissed at the culprit.

What you are describing is exactly all the problems with gates. Having them open-by-default improves somewhat. Having 100ms less reading time improves nothing. You are still limited by the speed of everyone else (cultural aspects are irrelevant as they are not improved by reader tech). If you want to improve entry throughput, have _no gate at all_ so that people do not have to bottleneck there. If you really have to put a validator, put it elsewhere.

And where would you put it? Anywhere you can think of would just be another (usually narrower) bottleneck.

In most stations, every available inch of width is used for these ‘gates’, and people move at a walking pace through them except for when people screw up. It’s a remarkably effective system.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44014412 to merge discussions.

It doesn’t work in high traffic areas, because the tap areas become impossible to get to if people actually use them - same bottle neck problem.

On busses they are de-facto soft gates, assuming the bus driver yells at you if you don’t use it - which often they do.

And why would they give up that sweet sweet rush hour revenue?

I understand your criticism since it seems that you never visited Japan, Tokyo specifically, before. The train/subway entrance gate is open by default. So if your ticket or IC card or phone didn't get registered properly because you don't have enough fund, the gate closes. And there are a lot of people that use the metro during rush hours, and when I said a lot, I mean it is basically a sea of people flowing through. And when those people are trying to get onto the platform, you want to make sure they walk past through the gates like they are just walking on street. Very fast scan with open gate makes it possible. You don't wait at the gate because you don't have to wait for ticket scan and gate door opening.

Also, if you use an iPhone (i don't have any experience with Android phone in Japan so I can't speak for it) to scan, you don't have to unlock the phone to use it. You simply reach into your pocket to grab your phone, and put the phone near the gate scanner as you approach the gate, and it scans instantly really fast (I was actually surprised how fast it was compared to the ones in Seoul). The experience feels like you are just walking through a narrow passage without any hindrance.

I also like your suggestion to remove the gates. When I visited Germany and Austria I really liked the subway there (no gates, and it even operates past midnight!). I saw only one ticket inspector out of probably about 20 subway rides when I was there, but it seems to work just fine. I am afraid such system might be abused in countries like Korea or China.

add: I also just realized that no gate system wouldn't work in Japan or Korea because during rush hour there is no way for ticket inspector to check the tickets of passengers on train. You are squeezed in each train unit like sardines squeezed in tin can.

The gates are extremely fast, and you don’t need to wait at all when you tap your card. In practice, this ends up being a pretty big deal for the number of passengers going through some of those gates. The whole experience is noticeably faster than any other ticket gate I’ve been through.

The absense of a negative is not a positive. It could be secure, or it could not. On the whole I’m inclined to believe that if it could be broken, it would have been in my lifetime.