- TOICA
nihongo|TOICA|トイカ|Toika is a rechargeable contactless
smart card ticketing system for JR Central railway network introduced in Chūkyō Area (GreaterNagoya ),Japan fromNovember 25 ,2006 .The name is the acronym of "Tōkai IC Card". [http://www.japanrail.com/pdf/news/JR_Bulletin057_Central.pdf JR Bulletin 057] . JR Central. Accessed December 5, 2007.] Just like JR East's
Suica or JR West'sICOCA , the card uses RFID technology developed bySony corporation known asFeliCa .As of December 2007, 350,000 cards are issued. In Nagoya area, the 50% of the riders, or the 70% of the commuter pass holders, used the card. [Japanese Wikipedia article of TOICA, retrieved on April 3, 2008.]
Usable Area
TOICA is currently accepted on JR Central lines in the following area.
*Tōkaidō Main Line , between Kannami and Sekigahara
*Chūō Main Line , between Nagoya and Nakatsugawa
*Kansai Main Line , between Nagoya and Yokkaichi
*Taketoyo Line , the whole line, between Ōbu and TaketoyoIntegrated services
TOICA is also usable in
Suica accepting area (Greater Tokyo Area , Sendai, and Niigata) andICOCA accepting area (Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto and Okayama-Hiroshima). Suica (includingMobile Suica ) and ICOCA are usable in TOICA accepting area as well. However, a card has to be used within a single area; for instance, it is not possible to use a card for the trip between Tokyo and Nagoya. The integrated service started from March 2008.Future of TOICA
The smart card that will be introduced within 2011 on
Nagoya Railroad (Meitetsu) andNagoya Municipal Subway , replacing the current nihongo|Tranpass |トランパス|Toranpasu system, may have an integrated service. The service withPiTaPa forKintetsu and other private railway networks inKansai region is also considered.On the other hand, there is no known plan to have integrated services with already existing smart card systems in
Shizuoka Prefecture , namelyLuLuCa (Shizuoka Railway) orNicePass (Enshu Railway). It also does not have integration plans with other cards, such asPASMO ,SUGOCA , orKitaca .External links
* [http://toica.jr-central.co.jp/ Official website by JR Central]
References
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