The General Office of the Ministry of Transport ("MOT") has recently issued the Circular on Deepening the Pilot Program on E-ticketing for Road Passenger Transport (the "Circular").
The Circular clearly states that in addition to Tianjin, Hebei and Shandong that take the lead in the pilot program on e-ticketing for road passenger transport, another eight provinces (municipality directly under the central government), including Beijing, Jiangsu and Guangdong, will participate in this pilot program. Transport authorities of those provinces (municipalities directly under the central government) operating the pilot program shall fully promote the application of electronic tickets for road passenger transport in places under their respective jurisdiction, and will roll out e-ticketing services among at least 50% of local coach stations above Class II by the end of September 2020 and among all coach stations of this kind by the end of November this year. In addition, the Circular clarifies that combining government guidance and market-based approaches to accelerate the application and popularization of intelligent equipment such as e-ticketing devices, real-name check-in devices and mobile service devices, will be encouraged, to render contactless services, such as buying tickets via mobile devices and scanning ID cards to check in, to passengers. The coach stations under the pilot program shall utilize the "facial recognition system" to facilitate check-in, if their conditions permit; if the conditions are not ready yet, they shall enable passengers to check in and board buses through QR code scanning together with manual identification verification.