Abstract
Expressway bus, which now carries approximately 100 million passengers a year recently in Japan, has been grown its functions as the most major public transport sector in the inter-city transport market especially in accordance to the expansion of expressway network. Bus-stations attached to the expressway system are one of the basic infrastructure for expressway bus services. They can be characterized by their allocation (or interval) on expressway routes, their physical types; road-side type, IC-attached type, and service area-attached type, and the rate of stopping of expressway buses. This study firstly reviewed the historical change of expressway bus operation and its designed roles, secondly surveyed the development of expressway bus-stops with respect to its characteristics and analyzed from economic viewpoint, thirdly mapped the spatial distribution of expressway bus-stops by region and discussed the regional disparity or biases observed in the maps from political and social decision making viewpoint. Finally, the study pointed out the relationship between the history of the change of roles of expressway bus operation and the facts of characteristics on expressway bus-stops.
