Abstract
Snowstorm on roads create serious disaster in winter in Hokkaido, Japan. The Hokkaido Prefecture built up an early road close aims to prevent and mitigate damage recently. Number of road closes due to snow-storm has been increased since 2014. The aim of this report is to identify what kind of impact of the road close on travel behavior at Nakashibetsu city and how citizen of Nakashibetsu city assess the road close due to snowstorm. We evaluated travel behavior during snow storm bringing the road close using mobile phone GPS data. Mobile Spatial Statistics by NTT DOCOMO is used to estimate population in the central city area of Nakashibetsu. Traffic volume passed through the five screen lines surrounded the Nakashibetsu city using the “Konzatsu-Tokei Data©” from ZENRIN DataCom Co. Ltd. Based on the results of these analysis, the traffic volume passed through the five screen lines decreased sharply and most of citizen did not move out from their living areas during snow storms. Also, the traffic volume increased in order to prepare the snow storm on the previous day of the snow storm. We conducted questionnaire survey to the general public and hearing investigation to regional administrators and road administrators on July 2016. Results of investigations indicated citizen accepted the road close due to risk awareness to snowstorm in winter. Also, it is indicated that countermeasures like choosing the early road close and early information to recommend staying indoors to the general public were effective to reduce damages due to snowstorms. The citizen of Nakashibetsu city accepted demerits of the road close and became successful for avoiding an unnecessary risk due to snow storm in winter.
