Hong Kong's Octopus

Reuters is carrying an interesting story about Hong Kong's Octopus smart card system, which serves as a mass-transit fare card and is now being accepted by merchants for small purchases. A magazine cover story from last year goes more into depth. Interesting to note that the system started off anonymous, and is now being converted into a personally-trackable system.

Comments

Octopus -- IS OPTiONAL!

[BWS]

Lemme say this again.... The Octopus card is optional.... you can ride the Bus, Subway, Star ferry, subway to the customs for China by paying cash. No one forces you to get a Octopus card.

However saying that, I have one myself and would remark at its conviecne. When I went on vacation to HK and China a while ago, I stayed in H.K. for ~10 days and I even got one myself. No more
looking for correct change at bus stations or
subway depots. It is really convenient. And yes, you can buy one anonymously. When you go pick them up (pay HKD50 for deposit) you are given
the OPTION to personalize, but you don't have it.

For those in Canada/USA the buses operate somewhat differently, there is no 'transfers' or whatever they're called in H.K. For example in Toronto you only pay one fair for each one way trip and you get a transfer for when you change bus or subways. In Hong Kong you pay each time you get on a bus, train, subway ... if you change bus you pay again.

Whereas in most places the ticket prices for bus or subway is fixed (I know its like $2 in Toronto, Canada) its different in Hong Kong. The price for subways and buses depends on approximately how far you travel (by approximately I mean say they divide one bus route into 5 zones and set a certain price if you travel within one zone and different if you travel though one zone, two zone,etc)

The combination of the above two factors is probably why the Octopus system became popular. People got really annoyed carrying large amounts of change at all times (remember, buses don't give change). This is very different from the way most public transit (bus/subway) work in North American cities.