China has developed an all-in-one train ticketing system that can unite the widely different ticket-selling platforms in more than 140 countries on a smartphone app, according to the top national rail science academy.
The system has been tailor-made for member countries of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – the world’s largest infrastructure investment campaign launched in 2013 – and will automatically access and coordinate their ticket-selling platforms.
Laos, in the heart of Southeast Asia, is the first country to sign up to the platform, with travellers using their smartphones to book tickets from Mar 15.
TICKET WITHOUT BORDERS
The main servers, within the Chinese border, can handle requests from passengers around the world in different languages, according to a paper published by the Chinese-language journal Railway Transport and Economy in March.
The team was led by computer scientist Zhang Zhiqiang from the China Academy of Railway Sciences Corporation, a government research agency overseeing the development of new train technology.
Instead of the US dollar, the belt and road ticket machine will use Swiss francs as its standard currency for international exchange, the team said.
“Settlement is based on the amount of Swiss francs for passenger tickets in different countries where the train stops, and a clearing report is generated on a monthly basis. The system provides data support functions such as income verification, electronic payment and liquidation,” the researchers said.
STEEP CLIMB TO THE TOP
The belt and road ticket machine is the international version of 12306, China’s domestic train ticket app, which was regarded by passengers as a joke when it was launched in 2011, because it crashed all the time.
The government sought help from China’s tech giants to rebuild the system and the 12306 is now the country’s most popular travelling app, with nearly 700 million subscribers – half the population.
In busy holiday periods such as Chinese New Year, the app can handle 200 billion travellers each day, issuing more than 1,500 tickets per second without a glitch.