Self-service for Century Park

Although this issue has been covered before, the Century Park subway station on Line 2 became the first station to use solely automatic machines to distribute subway tickets last week. Shanghaiist decided to see what all the hubbub was about by heading over to Century Park subway station to check out the the subway station sans manual ticket booths, replaced by two very large self-service machines. Although the station still maintained its service counter, all manual counters and the refund counter were gone.

That's not all:

The station also launched a service center equipped with a computer system, along with 10 vending machines, two recharging machines, two entrance turnstiles and two two-way turnstiles.

This is all part of a plan to replace all manual ticket counters on Line 2 with self-service machines by the end of the year. Those using stations on the other lines (except those built before 2005), will get a chance to try the machines within the next three years. However, for right now, Line 2 will be become the testing center for the system before it spreads to other subway stations. Seeing as Shanghaiist lives and depends on Line 2, we decided to give these new machines a go. However, when approaching the machines (among other confused customers), a large display confronted all users: "Temporary Out of Service".

Another picture of the self-service machine: