MARS (ticket reservation system)

MARS (Japanese: マルス, Hepburn: Marusu) is a train ticket reservation system used by the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and travel agencies in Japan. It was developed jointly by Hitachi Rail and the former Japanese National Railways (JNR),^[1] and later inherited by the Railway Information Systems Company [ja] (JR Systems), which is jointly owned by the seven JR Group companies.^[2] Originally short for Magnetic-electronic Automatic Reservation System, the name was later reinterpreted as Multi Access Reservation System,^[3]^[4] before being reverted to its original meaning.^[5]^[6]^[7]

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The MARS system used in JR ticket offices is Japan’s largest online real-time reservation network, providing year-round availability of 99.999%.^[8] It offers a variety of services, including seat reservations for Shinkansen and limited express trains, as well as fare calculations for base-fare tickets, commuter passes, and express tickets.^[9] The system currently connects to approximately 10,000 terminals at JR ticket offices and travel agencies, in addition to online systems operated by the individual JR companies.^[9] It is accessed about eight million times daily, with an average of more than 1.9 million tickets sold per day.^[9]

Outline

The host computer for MARS was originally located in Kokubunji, Tokyo, until 2013, when it was relocated to an undisclosed site in the northern Kantō region.^[10] Management of the system has been handled by JR Systems since 1 April 1987, following the division and privatization of JNR.^[8] In 2025, MARS received recognition as an IEEE Milestone.^[1]

JR station ticket offices equipped with MARS terminals are known as Midori-no-madoguchi (みどりの窓口; lit. 'green window'), selling tickets for all JR Group trains as well as selected bus routes and ferries. Passengers can reserve train and bus tickets up to one month in advance.^[11]^[12] In the JR Central region, these offices are instead referred to as kippu uriba (きっぷうりば; lit. 'ticket sales counter').

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History

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Perspective

MARS-1

The MARS-1 system was created by Mamoru Hosaka, Yutaka Ohno, and others at the Japanese National Railways' R&D Institute (now the Railway Technical Research Institute), and was built in 1958.^[13] It was the world's first seat reservation system for trains, and entered service in February 1960, initially only providing bookings for the Kodama and Tsubame limited express services.^[14] The MARS-1 was capable of reserving seat positions, and was controlled by a Hitachi mainframe transistor computer with a central processing unit consisting of a thousand transistors and a magnetic drum memory unit for data storage, which was where the MARS acronym originated from.^[13]

In 2008, the MARS-1 system received a "One Step on Electro Technology -Look Back to the Future-" commemorative plaque from the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.^[15]

MARS 100/200

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MARS 300

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MARS 500

MARS 501

Introduced in stages between 2002 and 2004, the MARS 501 introduced the concept of an Ethernet-based client–server model. Also, the ticket paper type was changed to thermal paper.

MARS 505

The latest version of MARS uses the MARS 505 system which was introduced in April 2020, which expanded on contactless, and ticketless boarding and booking capabilities brought along by the rise of mobile apps on smartphones and tablets.^[16]