RFID ticket in China

I saw some puzzling situations when I traveled to GuangZhou (southern China) this weekend. GuangShen Railway installed a RFID ticketing system and all tickets are embedded with a electronic circuit (photo 1). RFID application on train ticket is quite advance. In last winter,I traveled to UK and Sweden but did not see any RFID application in transportation system (even airlines).

photo1
What puzzling me is the ticket-checking in Photo 2. You could see there are two railway staff standing behind a gate to check passengers ticket. The narrow opening is to prevent people from passing the gate. Except the tickets embedded with a electronic circuit, very little has changed. The railway staff still need to validate passenger's ticket one by one. When a few hundred passengers passing through the small gate, one can image the chaos it created!



China being late in infrastructure investment projects are applying advance technologies but this example shows that the benefit of technology may not be realized.



Another puzzling issue is why do they need a RFID ticket for a one hour journey where 99% of passengers do not check-in their luggages !!



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