わが国における交通圏の型について—本邦旅客交通の地域的考察—

抄録

In a railway traffic, the place where the flow of passengers is cut into two is a traffic divide. It may be delineated by the directions of passengers flow. A region surrounded by the traffic divides may be called a traffic community. The methods by which the sphere of a traffic community is determined are as follows:
In a case where there are many stations most of whose passengers ride towards one large city A, the sphere where those stations are distributed is called the traffic community of city A. The traffic divides. here are determind only along the railways. In no railway region, has the writer adopted the bus service method for deciding the sphere of a traffic community. This method was used in England and Wales by F. H. W. Green. In a mountainous district which have no bus service the writer has made use of the road pattern instead of bus services.
On Figure 1, the traffic communities in Japan are shown by dotted lines. Long-distance passengers in Japan usually travel by the Japan National Railways. So the writer has applied the size of the railway station as an indicator which shows the centrality of a place. It is said that the size of a railway station may be determined by the number or the net revenue of passenger fares. But the writer considers that the number of passengers of a station cannot exactly signify. its size. Because at many stations in giant cities, a larger percentage of passengers would have short trips. There are also more numerous commuters than ordinary passengers at such stations. On the contrary, in the case of a station of the regional center, relatively many passengers take long distance journeys The net revenue of passenger fares on a station would be able to show its size correctly. Because the passenger fares of long distance travellers are higher in price than that of short distance ones, and commuters have a reduced fare. Therefore the hierarchy or the grade of size of stations fo rthe whole country may be shown by their net revenue of passenger fares. The size of railway station based on net revenue of passenger fares has a logarithmic normal distribution. Figure I shows the distribution of sizes of main railway stations based on annual net revenue by the round sings from A to n. Figure 2 shows the types of traffic communities in main parts of Japan, which were determined by the size of their important stations and its numbers. The results of those analyses would be summarized as follows:
There are several large traffiic communities in Japan. For example, the traffic communities of Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto and Kobe have extremely wide areas and many large stations, and the centralities of their centers are very high. Most of the prefectural centers have a general type of traffic community. They are wide in area and the cent-ralities of their centers are relatively high. In an industrial area, traffic community forms a narrow region, but it has several large stations. In the marginal districts such as Hokkaido, Tohoku and southern Kyushu, principal traffic communities have rather wide area, but there are no large stations except their centers. In mountainous country, the traffic community becomes very narrow, and the centrality of its center is very low, then such small communities are apt to be continuous.