Subway Ticket Sales to Move to Machine Purchase Only on Lines 7, 8, 15, and Fangshan Line as of Nov 15
Great news for those people who love a pocket full of 1 kuai coins spewed from subway ticket machines (and for those of you dreaming of an automated future): Sales of subway tickets for Lines 7, 8, 15, and the Fangshan Line will become completely machine-only come November 15 in a trial to see if 100 percent people-free ticketing is viable across the entirety of Beijing.
This means that as of mid-November, you will no longer be able to buy your subway tickets or top up your card with the help of a surly uniformed employee at ticket windows.
In order to fulfil this utopian, workerless dream, the 334 stations along the chosen four subway lines have been equipped with a grand total of 2,983 machines, meaning there is at least some machines at every station along these four lines.
Staff previously assigned to sell tickets at windows (and otherwise not occupied by staring at an x-ray of your bag or waving magic metal detectors about) will stand next to the machines to teach those resistant to bowing down to our robot overlords how to get it to eat your crumpled RMB 10 note and spit out a ticket.
No need to go into a complete panic just yet, as truth be told statistics indicate that the majority of subway riders have already become accustomed to electronic ticket purchasing (not to mention the entire ticket retailing system is fully bilingual for monolingual laowai). And at least for the short term there'll be someone around to help – though there's no promise that they're not in fact androids; recent escapees from Beijing's robot conference last week.
It was only a mere eight years ago that Beijing finally did away with its paper ticketing system that tediously required riders to queue up for a paper ticket at one window, then turn around and take a few steps forward to allow another employee to rip the ticket for you.
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Email: margauxschreurs@truerun.com
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