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Did You Get Your IC Card ?

For Beijing's sometimes harried commuters, the last three days of each month could be very troublesome. This was when they had to stand in long queues to buy their monthly public transportation passes.

These days are now at an end with the issuance of five types of stored-value swipe cards collectively known as the Beijing Municipal Administration and Communications Card and colloquially known as the yikatong, 一卡通, or "one card pass."  The cards can be bought at appointed service stations, such as Beijing Municipal Administration & Communications Card Company Limited, China CITIC Bank branches, Industrial Bank Company Limited, or post offices in Beijing. 

With the new automated pass system that entered use on May 10, Beijing caught up with other Chinese cities that have turned to the card to improve their public transportation ticketing systems and brought an end to the use of its 81-year-old paper public transportation monthly pass.

Sales of the new palm-sized card (IC card) began on April 1. The card allows purchasers to use public transportation for a maximum of 140 times each month. There are four types of cards: the bus card for adults at 45 yuan/month (US$5.61/month), the bus card for students at 20 yuan/month (US$2.50/month), a subway card for 60 yuan/month (US$7.50/month), and card for both bus and subways at 90 yuan/month (US$11.20/month). Also, on buses which currently only accept cash payments, card holders can get a 20 percent off their usual ticket prices.

The IC cards are fashionably designed, especially to suit the tastes of students and women customers, according to the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communication (BMCC). The card is a high-end product made from environmentally friendly materials, and it is capable of being read and written to about 100,000 times.

On the first day of sales to the public, more than 66,350 IC cards were issued, with 70 percent for the metro and the remainder for buses.

A 20-yuan (US$2.5) deposit is required for each IC card in case of damage or loss.

Beijing is one of few remaining Chinese cities that still use monthly tickets. During the past 81 years, ordinary people living in Beijing have used subsidized monthly bus tickets as their best way to get around. The tickets allow passengers to travel on buses or subways as long or as frequently as they choose.

But the cut-rate system places a heavy burden on the municipal government's finances and weakens the competitive edge of bus firms, which rely heavily on government support. About 1 billion yuan (US$125 million) is spent by the municipal government each year to subsidize the monthly ticketing system.

Ticket prices for Beijing's public transport facilities have remained unchanged since 2000, but fuel costs have been raising steadily. A continuous increase in energy prices has pushed the bus companies into a corner, with gasoline costs increasing by as much as 15 percent per year.

Further, the available routes for monthly tickets are usually the busiest and most crowded. The use of the monthly ticket has greatly reduced profits on these particular lines.

Beijing started to issue the old monthly bus pass in 1925 when the pass was a privilege enjoyed only by social elites. Today the pass has become a welfare benefit enjoyed by around 1.1 million commuters in the capital, many of whom have low incomes.

In fact, Beijing is lagging behind many cities in China.

Shanghai was among the first Chinese cities to abolish inexpensive monthly tickets. And people in South China's Shenzhen also think it's reasonable to abolish the tickets.

The bus companies had hoped to abolish monthly passes saying that "the cheap prices put a heavy burden on the municipal government and weaken the competitive edge of the bus companies which rely heavily on government support."

At the same time, as the 2008 Olympic Games host city, Beijing must surely have more than a smart bus card system to materialize its commitments to stage a high-tech international event.

For numerous residents in Beijing, such an automatic fare collection system indeed means concrete improvement in their daily lives. By making ticketing a little easier for every one, the new system can save time for passengers while raising the efficiency of the public transportation system.

Yet, some say, all the benefits of the new bus cards cannot be delivered automatically. Advanced technology is only part of what is needed to improve the efficiency of public service. They say the municipal administrator of public transportation in Beijing should work hard and carefully to overcome all the local difficulties that have long delayed the introduction of smart bus cards.

There are also other factors to consider.

Beijing's commuters are not familiar with smart public transportation cards. As a result, and as it actually happened, some passengers ignored the requirement to wait in line and get on and off the bus from specific gates, causing chaos at bus stations. Many bus stations are not designed to separate passengers into different lines. As passengers wait in a crowd, buses squeeze into stops in a disorderly way.

Heavy traffic during Beijing's notorious rush hour partially explains why buses have to enter and leave stations in a hurry.

Requiring buses to queue when making their stops is a needed step to match up with lines of passengers waiting for specific buses. But in absence of related measures to improve traffic flows on the city's roadways, long lines of buses waiting to enter stops simply adds to the traffic jams.

But the city is making preparations to confront these problems. While thousands of transportation aids have been sent to keep passengers waiting in lines, a number of key bus stations have been equipped with time-saving mobile ticketing machines to allow passengers to swipe cards before boarding. And the bus companies have also put more buses on the road to ensure adequate communications.

Beijing commuters' initial experiences with smart bus cards might not be as sweet as those in Shanghai or Hong Kong, but the municipal transportation administrator's effort is still of great help in promoting the use of the new bus cards.