2024 Volume 80 Issue 20 Article ID: 24-20071
The introduction of community buses and Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) in Japan has been progressing since the 1990s and 2000s as a means of mobility to support residents’ daily lives. However, due to the small scale of the targeted demand, it is challenging to secure revenue based on user fares; hence, this requires a continuous financial burden on local governments, and there have been cases where local governments have been forced to review their routes and means of provision. In this paper, to quantitatively understand the modal characteristics of community buses and demand transportation systems introduced in Japan, we surveyed municipalities that have introduced community buses or Demand Responsive Transport and analysed the costs involved in introducing and operating community buses and Demand Responsive Transport. In addition, the survey was conducted to understand the cost of introducing and operating community buses and Demand Responsive Transport, the actual transport scale, and the general situation of the evaluation in actual municipalities. Furthermore, based on the above results, we will consider the introduction of evaluation indicators that express the characteristics of DRT in response to reservations.
