Abstract
This study reveals the spatial structure of railroad station areas that are smaller than municipal divisions. A town is regarded as the areas around a station. The scale of a town is measured by the number of passengers that go in and out of the station. The chain of railroad station areas from the terminal station, the largest station in the area, in the metropolis to the suburb creates an urban area.
There are two types of the above chains in metropolitan areas of Japan. In one the station nearest the terminal station is small and the second largest station is far from the terminal station. In the other the second largest station is located next to the terminal station and other stations become gradually smaller as they move away from the terminal station. This study can contribute to plans for the development of station areas in a metropolitan area as it elucidates the mechanisms of the spatial structure in the urban area.
In the main body, a town is regarded as the circular railroad station area to simplify the model. Then the rank-size and gravity models were applied to perform a simulation analysis to understand how gaps in the size of stations in the metropolitan area, the number of stations, and the traffic conditions affect the relative interactions based on the relationships between stations nearest to the terminal station and the terminal station itself.
As a result, the relative interactions showed that the distance between the terminal station and the next station is greater when the number of stations is small, the gap between the size of stations is small, and the size of the terminal station in the metropolitan area is large.
The above model was applied to a railroad route in the metropolitan area of the Kanto region using a discriminant analysis. The results were partially similar to the simulation analysis.
JEL Classification: R12, R40
