An Elementary Analysis on Additional Services Supply Capacity by a Local Taxi Company in a Depopulated Area

Abstract

When we think about sustainable society in depopulated areas, it is an important perspective that, a community round-trip type service supplier can play a role of supporter by giving additional services between his main businesses. In this study, we focus on a local taxi company as an additional service supplier. Assuming taxi drivers supply some support activities between “in-service” hours of their business, we show a methodology for an elementary analysis how much they could have done such activities. Next we discuss a supply possibility of additional services of the taxi company by analyzing the main service record data of passenger transportation. Employing space-time prism concepts, it will be made clear by measuring the number of districts the taxi drivers can visit for additional services, under space and time constraints of “interval of passenger transportations”. As a result of a case study in Wakasa town in Tottori, we found that frequency of the additional services is almost once in every week.