Heavy Vehicle Traffic Flow Changes on Expressways in the Tokyo Metropolitan and Surroundings Caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake

Abstract

This paper summarizes the detailed heavy vehicle traffic flow on expressways for three months from March 11, 2011 of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Day by day changes of traffic, comparison with a historical data, and analysis together with related statistics found the following results. Western route called Kan-etsudou observed 20% increase of traffic by detour trip toward disaster region Tohoku during the first week. From 4weeks until 3manths after the earthquake, the average traffic volume increased by 20% compared with 2010 and an increase of 10% average trip length. One of the major reasons of this change was that ports in Tokyo bay area for freight transport were used as an alternative to damaged ports in the Tohoku. The Influence to Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway network was quite limited.