Quality-of-service is of major interests to drivers, who are the consumers of road service. However, currently used measures of level-of-service to evaluate the traffic condition of road sections are not necessarily linked to the perceived level-of-service by the drivers. This paper proposes a framework to measure the driver's perception to the quality of service. The proposed framework has a two-layer structure consisting of microscopic and macroscopic levels with aggregation model. A series of analysis based on the proposed framework is conducted, and finding process of a rather good index of level-of-service is also demonstrated.

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This paper discusses evaluation of quality of service (QOS) of tragic flow, which is one of the major concerns for highway planning and traffic management, from the aspect of driver's perception or comfort. It is shown that the driving comfort can indirectly be measured as driver's mental stress, through modeling the lane-changing behavior. Based on data obtained from a driving survey, several models for vehicular movement in basic expressway sections are estimated, and a traffic simulation model incorporating these models is developed. From the simulation results for various traffic flow levels under unconstrained flow conditions, a relationship between level of service and driver's comfort is shown.

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Platoon characteristics were introduced to measure service quality on multi-lane highway. The data used were collected from 18 locations on Tomei expressway. Due to the lack of study on platoon behavior on multi-lane highway, new platoon criteria and platoon behavior were investigated. Critical Headway was determined by relative speed method and exponential model. Platoon characteristics were explained by platoon rate, platoon size and percent of followers. New levels of service criteria, which based on road users points of view was proposed based on platoon parameters.

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LOS concept is very important in highway system management which contains planning, design, maintenace, and replacement. For example highway intersection is designd so thatquality of service for road users may be a desirable state. This paper discussed measures of LOS and thresholds of LOS classification should be determined depending on the objectives which LOS concept will be applied, and a few critical points based on some traffic flow performance may be a proper threshold value of LOS not only theoretically but also accountably.

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An approach for evaluating quality of expressway traffic service is proposed in this study, based upon a driver's satisfaction with road conditions. With a customer satisfaction survey for expressway drivers, models are developed to estimate the road user's satisfaction with traffic flow and safety by using calculative traffic indicators. Then the quality of a expressway is assessed by the probability of satisfaction calculated with the models. The proposed method, which can be used by planners, is illustrated with a case study of expressway sections. Some concerns remain; however, and a method to determine the quality of expressway service by an annual average and an accumulated distribution of driver's satisfaction is suggested.

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It is expected that Japanese interregional population distribution will drastically change due to the foregoing decrease in population. It is also expected that Japanese public sector will be decentralized. This paper investigates the role of national land use planning in the era of population decrease. We try to answer for the following two questions: “Does the decentralized system achieve the efficiency?” and “What is the role of national land use planning?”. As the results of model analysis, we show that i) the decentralized system does not achieve the efficiency if the future population is zero in at least one region, and that ii) the subsidy policy by the central government is needed to achieve the efficiency.

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People have a request to travel reliably as well as shortly, and it is needed to assess uncertainty of traffic networks for traffic management or network planning. In the stochastic user equilibrium, the random utility theory is used, but the traffic volume and the travel time that are assigned are deterministic. Thus, the previous network equilibrium models cannot assess uncertainty or travel time reliability of traffic network. In this study, we formulate a stochastic network equilibrium model whose traffic flow and travel time are random and have probability distributions. This model enables us to assess network's uncertainty or reliability. Then, we apply it to Kanazawa road network, and examine its validity or applicability.

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Nowadays, the manipulation in the project evaluation is severely criticized by the general public. To avoid this problem, we must design an efficient audit system. We try to derive the optimal structure of the audit system of the project evaluation. Furthermore, we will try to investigate the roles and the limits of the making of the manual of CBA. From the model analysis based on the contract theory, we show 1) the optimal structure of the audit system which is dependent on the benefits of the projects and the costs of the audit system, and 2) the case where the making of the manual of CBA is beneficial compared to the audit system.

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Recently, it is severely criticized that the demand forecast of public investment has been manipulated by Japanese administration to justify the implementation of their projects. The aim of this paper is to design the mechanism which prevents the manipulation of demand forecast. Based on the contract theory, we formulate the principal-agent relationship in demand forecast. By solving this, we derive two optimal contracts. One is VOI reward scheme and the other is logarithmic scoring reward scheme. By examining this result, we derive some implications for the mechanism design of demand forecast.

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This paper aims to develop an environmental evaluation system by integrating traffic simulator and regional atmospheric simulator in order to analyze the effect of transportation policy for wide-area and to estimate traffic flow and atmospheric environment change, particularly focusing on SPM. Traffic characteristics and mol-side-land-use information on the region, traffic signal were inputted in traffic microscopic simulation “Paramics”. Especially we developed a new model for modifying OD matrix to improve the accuracy of traffic flow, and a PM emission model to calculate PM volume in high-resolute time scale by considering vehicle behavior and geographical characteristics.

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Since aviation service have the characteristics of network goods, the expansion of an airport capacity affects the overall airline networks. Considering that the airport development plan is the sub-system of the Comprehensive National Development plan, the policy maker should take into account not only the summation of costs and benefits but also spatial distribution of costs and benefits. The aim of this paper is to measure spatial distribution of the effect of the Haneda airport capacity expansion on Japanese domestic air passenger markets. We find that the expansion of Haneda airport's capacity benefits not only Kanto region but also Kyushu and Hokkaido regions that the traffic density from/to Kanto region is high.

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Population recovery process after a disaster is influenced by many factors in different spatial scales. In this paper, to analyze affectors in various spatial scales in recovery process, we focused on a spatial-temporal statistical model, which combines a spatial regression model and a time series model, considering that socio-economic data sets are not available on the same spatial and temporal scales. We applied the model to the Nagata Ward, Kobe City after the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, of which population recovery is relatively delayed compared to those in other damaged areas. As a result, the influence of variables in both local and large spatial scales are quantitatively identified, and it is shown that recovery policies both in large and local spatial scales are required.

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This study describes a driver eye movement and vehicle control behavior in an urban motorway curved section passages. In curved section, there are some sections where the accident occurrence frequency is high. Human error is one of the major factors on the cause of traffic accident. In order to analyze human error generating factor, a running car experiment was carved out in some routes with curved section of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway. Using the results of analysis, we could consider human error generation factors by relating the motorway environment, eye movement, and centrifugal acceleration in the curved section. As a result, authors propose the model, which evaluates a risk of curved section by relating to the driver eye movement and driving behavior.

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In this paper, an asset management methodology is presented to investigate the optimal repair policies of the public facilities under uncertainty of economic lives. The economic and physical deterioration of a facility are assumed to be subject to Markovian processes. The Markov decision model is formulated to find out the optimal policies for scrapping and repair of the facility by considering simultaneously economic values as well as life cycle costs for repair of the facility. The model presented in the paper is applied to the asset management of the port facilities.

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Infrastructure projects often involve multiple activities and interrelated decisions to switch between activities under uncertainty. This article provides a novel quantitative approach for evaluating such complex projects as a set of real options. In our framework, an infrastructure project is represented as a directed graph where the nodes correspond to economic activities in the project and the links denote options to switch between activities. We first show that evaluating a project in this framework is formulated as a variational inequality problem. It is then proved that the problem can be decomposed into solving a series of tractable complementarity problems in a successive manner. This graph-theoretic decomposition scheme enable us to develop an efficient numerical algorithm for solving the project evaluation problems with any graph structure.

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The purpose of this study is to examine psychological determinants of promoting P&R measure. Our hypothesis was based on the decision making model of environment conscious behavior (Hirose, 1995). A survey was carried out for residents in the area where a social experiment of P&R was being implemented, and 893 responses were obtained (61%). The results were as follows, a) Main determinants of public transport choice behavior were perceived behavior control, cost evaluation and behavioral intention. b) Attitude and subjective norm affected the behavior indirectly by way of behavioral intention. We discussed that psychological strategy only for encouraging the environment consciousness was insufficient, while the strategies of affecting to perceived behavior control and cost evaluation should be emphasized.

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This paper proposes a method of inverse-estimating the unknown parameters of the composition model which composed of integrated network equilibrium model using observed traffic. A bi-level optimization problem is built in order to estimate unknown parameters of the [MSUE/ATIS-Demand] model and link cost function. It is proved that a bi-level optimization problem can be efficiently calculated by nonlinear sensitivity analysis. The following results about the estimation of the unknown parameters are found: (1) there is an effective setting method for a set of observed links; (2) it is possible to improve precision of estimate by making the observation error small.

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An electronic toll collection (ETC) system began operating in Japan in March 2001. However, only a very small percentage of vehicles in Japan have in-vehicle ETC transmitters. This research seeks to determine what sorts of ETC promotion programs and ETC features will motivate drivers to purchase the in-vehicle transmitters. Stated choice experiments were conducted using an Internet-based questionnaire. Several subjective rating questions regarding perceived attitudes on ETC system were also asked in order to categorize respondents with the similar preferences. The relationship between perceived value and purchasing behavior of transmitters are investigated by using an ordered latent class choice model.

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