Abstract
The Shimanami Expressway was opened in 1999 and all of the routes which had been planned to connect the Honshyu and Shikoku regions were completed. These changes in transportation networks have affected the route choices of trucks : the truck operators have changed their routes from using ferry lines to using the connection bridges.
The committee which was established to discuss the problems of the Japan Highway Public Corporation suggested in December 2002 that the toll of these bridges should be lowered by 50%. Although a rise in the toll of these bridges by about 25% was scheduled for April 2004, the Japan Highway Public Corporation accepted the proposal from the committee and lowered the toll of the bridges by about 10% in July 2004. This reduction in the toll has encouraged a decrease in the use frequency of ferry lines. This situation may contradict the Modal-shift policy.
We plan to analyze the influence of a reduction in the toll of the bridges on the route choice of trucks and the possibility of a modal-shift by using ferry lines. In this study, to obtain fundamental knowledges for these analyses, we built route choice models for trucks by employing Logit Model and analyzed the characteristics of the route choice of trucks with regard to changes in the toll of the connection bridges. Based on the results of these analyses, we calculated the time cost of the trucks and the effect that a change in the toll would have on the probability of trucks' choosing the routes using the connection bridges.
