Mobility Burden on User of Remote Island Route

Abstract

There are many remote islands in Japan. Most of these islands are connected by bridges, but still some islands have only ferry boats or passenger ships between the island and the mainland as vital means for transportation. The residents of the remote islands have to transfer from a ferry boat to a local bus at a transport hub when they visit the main island to go shopping or hospital and so on. For the elderly residents, it is a burden to wait for a long time for the bus or the ferry boat and to change transportation vehicles at the transport hub. The author s have evaluated the burden by the generalized time. The generalized time is a measure which evaluates the mobility burden for users of remote islands route, and obtained easily and quantitatively by investigating walking speed and transit behavior. However, we were not able to confirm whether the acquired results are specific to the solitary island surveyed or it can be expanded to general remote islands. In this study, we investigated another remote island area and clarified differences of the equivalent time parameter and the psychological lost time depending on residential areas.