Japan Press Weekly

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2015 September 2 - 8 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JR East's unmanned wicket project disregards the socially disadvantaged

Ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, East Japan Railway Company (JR East) is promoting the introduction of barrier-free transportation systems. Many citizens, however, criticize the company’s plan to remove station employees from ticket gates for creating new “barriers” for passengers.

JR East has been implementing the unstaffed wicket project since last year by introducing remote control systems.

At a JR station in the Tokyo metropolitan area, staff members are monitoring the automatic wickets and ticket vending machines at eight stations via 16 TV monitors. They deal with questions and requests from passengers over the intercom. A station employee said that they are sometimes at a loss when several interphones ring at the same time.

The introduction of remote operation systems has been threatening the safety and convenience for elderly and disabled people. Yamashiro Kanji, a 58-year-old man with impaired vision, said, “I often have trouble locating the intercom button.” Ichihashi Hiroshi, 65, with a speech disorder from cerebral palsy, said, “Some station employees cannot fully understand what I am saying over the interphone.”

In August, the railroad company installed another remote system at Jujo Station in Tokyo’s Kita Ward. Since then, it has become more noticeable that elderly persons are having trouble when using the automatic ticket gate.

In the neighborhood of Jujo Station are three schools, a sports center, and a medical institution for the disabled. A survey conducted in 2013 shows that the average number of cases where station workers had to take action to meet requests from passengers, such as wheelchair users, reached about 130 a day.

Kobayashi Yoshihiro, chair of a civic group supporting the disabled in Tokyo, said, “JR East’s introduction of remote control systems is based on non-disabled persons as users. The company lacks consideration for the weak in society.”

Japanese Communist Party member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly Sone Hajime and the JCP members’ group of the Kita Ward Assembly have repeatedly urged the transport ministry to instruct the railroad company to abandon its plan to eliminate the staff of ticket barriers. JCP lawmaker Ikeuchi Saori pushed Administrative Reform Minister Arimura Haruko in August to direct the corporation to assign a sufficient number of personnel at all ticket gates.