Detailed observation data on road traffic conditions enhance the possibility of accurate short-term traffic volume prediction. Deep learning is one method of predicting the short-term traffic volume of road sections on highway networks, and it provides high prediction accuracy. We propose a new convolutional neural network model that predicts the traffic volume of road links on urban networks, whose structure is more complex than that of highway networks. The proposed model is designed to consider the connectivity types of road links on urban networks through a convolution operation. The proposed model consists of three types of layers. A set of convolution layers extracts the local features of road networks through the convolution operation based on the connectivity types of road links. A pooling layer summarizes outputs of the convolution layers. A fully-connected layer extracts the global features of traffic conditions on a target urban network. We conducted an experiment to predict the traffic volume of road links on an arterial road network in Tokyo. The results indicated that the proposed model provides almost the same prediction accuracy as that of the fully-connected neural network model, even though the proposed model contains fewer parameters compared to the fully-connected neural network model.

The purpose of this research is to clarify the relationship between actual situation of school commuting; which for instance, transport means/time consumption of school commuting, peer commuting, after school activity, and children’s physical as well as mental health.

In Tsukuba city, Ibaraki prefecture, an interview survey among public residents and a questionnaire survey among elementary school students were conducted.

As a result, 1) physical activity level of elementary school students differs according to the actual situation of how they commute to school, 2) variable ‘greeting’ positively affects children’s mental health. These reveal that go back from school with peers and be in touch with the community vitally impact on children’s mental health.

This study aims to reveal the effect of pavement conditions on traffic accident risks through statistical analysis. The current pavement maintenance is planned based on the road surface survey that measures the physical damage on the pavement surface. The indices for the physical damage on road surface are good representation for the structural healthiness and the driving comfort, but they do not always measure the traffic safety levels of the pavement. This limitation hinders planning the pavement management scheme ideal in achieving safer driving environment. This study empirically analyzes the relationships between the pavement conditions and accident risks in different weather. The pavement conditions are represented by three indicators: rutting depth, IRI and cracking ratio. The accident frequency is modelled based on the Poisson regression analysis. The model estimation results show that rutting depth has significant impact in increasing accident risk, particularly in rainy weather, whereas the IRI shows inverse effect. For cracking ratio, the results are not conclusive, but suggest potential influence on accident risk.

The long-term objective of this research is to analyze quantitative effects of introducing advanced methods for controlling air traffic flows to Tokyo International Airport. As the first step to archive this purpose, in this paper, the operation of Point Merge System which is one of advanced navigation methods was analyzed by using ADS-B and ATC instruction data at Dublin Airport. An airspace simulator was developed by considering the characteristics of ATC instructions. Using the simulator, the performance of Point Merge System at Tokyo International Airport was briefly examined.

In general, it is known that elderly drivers are prone to change their driving style if they realize their physical/mental ability decline for compensating safety. To prompt the driving with compensating ability decline for elderly drivers, they must not only realize their ability decline, but also judge that that decline poses some safety problems during their driving. We believe that these judging processes are attributed to the state of anxiety while driving. The ability decline without any anxiety would not be recognized by elderly drivers even that causes serious problems on driving continuation with safety. We think that these gaps in elderly drivers between consciousness and behavior may pose particular types of accident related to elderly drivers.

In this paper, through an analysis of the relationship between physical/mental state and anxiety while driving, abilities which are not prone to be taken care by elderly because it does not have any anxiety are shown, and then some important tips for elderly’s safety driving are discussed.

In order to further secure pedestrian traffic safety, not only the method of spatially separating pedestrians and vehicles but also the use of roads where natural consideration is given to pedestrians is also de sired. In this research, in order to grasp the structure of the road where the pedestrian is easy to walk and the speed of the car can be suppressed, roads with different road surface structures such as color classification of road surface, type of pavement, and outside line are created in VR (virtual reality) space. In these spaces, a traffic survey was conducted, and the relationship between road surface structure and traffic behavior was analyzed. As a result, it was considered that there was a possibility of improving the safety of residential roads through ingenuity of road structure.

Start-up lost time (SLT, hereinafter) is one of the basic parameters for evaluating the capacities of signalized intersections. In the urban area, intersections are closely spaced and traffic demand is high. Drivers’ ambitions for the quick startup are demotivated by negative downstream traffic conditions, for example, limited available storage length, long queue and/or poorly coordinated traffic signals. The performance of upstream intersection is deteriorated including the growth in the SLT. In this paper, the influence of downstream conditions over SLT is analyzed by empirical study. The result indicates that SLTs at subject intersections are mainly influenced by downstream queue length, offset, segment length, and clearing vehicles. Short downstream segment length, long queue, positive offset, and long clearing time will lead to a high SLT value. Regarding this finding, the effect is further investigated by developing a new car-following model. The new model is built by improving the intelligent driver model and calibrated it with empirical data by a genetic algorithm. Through scenario simulation and comparison with empirical data, it is proved that the new model not only can reproduce the SLT increase under different downstream conditions but also have a good fit with real-world data.

It is often said that lifestyle is quite important for better health. Especially, improvement of physical activity level brings better effects on individual’s health condition. Non-car transportation use such as walk, bicycle, and public transportation provides more opportunity to exercise.

This research tries to identify relationship focusing on people’s transportation habit and health, especially considering difference between male and female. In particular, authors used health index data such as life expectancy, medical cost per capita, morbidity and mortality of lifestyle-related disease, and lifestyle index such as vegetable, alcohol intake and smoking habit, and transportation habit index such as share of car / public transportation / bicycle mode on commuting. Authors analyze these relationship with these data aggregated in almost all Japanese prefectures unit by regression analysis.

As a result, significant relationship is identified between some health indexes and lifestyle indexes, in particular, life expectancy, medical cost per capita and morbidity of several disease in health index, and vegetable and alcohol intake in lifestyle index, as similar as generally discussed. However, relationship with transportation habit is also significantly identified. In particular, where “modal share of public transportation on commuting” is higher, some morbidity of diabetes and medical cost per capita significantly tend to lower.

These results indicate that not only improvement of “lifestyle with food, smoke and drink” as generally recognized, but also increase of “use of public transportation” may contribute to decrease a risk of suffering lifestyle-related disease, and to reduce medical expense. Promoting non-car use and public transportation use, which make more opportunity of physical activity in daily life can improve individual’s health, and also improve social expense on medical cost. Based on these results, policy development cooperation of transportation and health is highly expected.

This study grasps the driver's perception on the traffic quality as the driver's utility for traffic quality of road section, and develops a systematic method to estimate the level of quality of traffic service by formulating an utility function based on a set of probe data reflecting the microscopic driving environment surrounding the driver as an explanatory variables. Through a driving simulator experiments, the proposed index on the perceived traffic quality of the driver shows higher description ability than other indices including travel time and average speed, and pointed out that the level-of service index based on the macro traffic variables cannot capture the driver's microscopic perception. The influence of the probe data penetration rate on the estimation accuracy is also analyzed.

To alleviate congestions at signalized intersections, Displaced Left-turn Crossovers (DLTs), also known as Continuous Flow Intersections (CFIs) are becoming as prevalent treatments over the past decade in some developed cities around the world. Through the novel solution provided by DLTs, left turn flows could cross the opposing traffic lanes upstream of the main intersection. As a result, DLTs lead to higher capacities, lower delays and fewer crashes. In spite of the extensive preliminary studies focused on the operational performance of DLTs, little research has been conducted considering the coordination of DLTs. In addition, although the considerable sparse works highlighted the DLT intersection, the heterogeneous traffic condition as a dominant operation environment in lots of developing countries has never been estimated. Hence, in order to fulfill the heterogeneous condition needs and considering the coordination of DLTs, the driving force of this study context is developing a real-time demand-responsive signal control system on the solid foundation of the optimization principles. This entire algorithm was built based on developing a mathematical model and utilizing PTV-VISSIM as a micro-simulator based approach. In order to test the proposed algorithm, an inter-process communication and dynamic object creation were provided by employing VISSIM-COM interface and MATLAB a multi-paradigmnumerical computing environment. Although the academic in nature, the proposed algorithm presented in this context could be evolved through a real-world practical application. As a realistic study case, actually obtained data were made available of three signalized intersections located in an arterial corridor in central Cairo, Egypt.

Entry capacity is one of the most important indexes to evaluate the roundabout operational performance. Both the geometric elements and vehicle types have an impact on the entry capacity. Passenger Car Equivalent (PCE) for heavy vehicles is utilized for roundabout entry capacity estimation. In the Japanese Roundabout Manual (JRM), PCE is proposed as a constant value. However, it cannot reflect that the capacity of roundabouts varies with different geometric elements and heavy vehicle percentages. Therefore, the objective of this study is to estimate the PCE for heavy vehicles depending on various geometric elements. Entry capacity and PCE were estimated by the entry capacity equation in JRM and traffic simulator VISSIM, respectively. The results revealed that the entry capacity changes with different geometric elements and is significantly related to inscribed circle diameter. It was also concluded that PCE changes with increasing heavy vehicle percentages in the entering and circulating flows.

TOD (Transit Oriented Development) remains the key issue for mitigating traffic congestion, enhancing environmental friendly society, and health promotion of citizens. It is essential to enhance the convenience of public transportation to achieve the successful TOD. Currently, the concept of MaaS (Mobility as a Service) is paid the considerable attention. While the components of MaaS widely varied, the subscription service for public transportation is commonly applied as the fare system. The subscription service may contribute the convenience of using public transportation and promote a model shift. However, the conventional suppliers of bus service would hesitate to apply this service, because it is unclear how the travel behavior of bus users will change, and more importantly, how much profit they can expect.

In this research, we estimate the expected profit under the condition that the subscription service is applied to the public transit bus service through both SP survey and two-weeks social experiments. In the experiments, the suppliers of the bus service publish the free bus ride tickets, with which the selected respondents can freely use all public bus lines in the designated area for two weeks. Then, we asked the respondents the willingness-to-pay to the free ride tickets and the behavioral change during the two weeks. The results show that; i) the bus service supplier can expect the same or more profit if it can appropriately set the fare, ii) the frequency of bus trip increases, iii) the respondents use buses with various trip purpose except for commuting and going home, and iii) the more than 90 % of respondents were satisfied with subscription service.

This study clarified the traffic issues at residential roads in an elementary school district, Nagoya city by observation and questionnaire. Discussing the results of these surveys with inhabitants of the district, we planned to conduct social experiment for reducing vehicle speed by a choker installation on basic section and then several chokers as full-scale countermeasure were installed by road management authority in the same road section. In this study, we examined the effect of these countermeasures from both traffic flow and inhabitants consciousness by temporal analyses. As the results of these countermeasures, the reduction of spot speed was confirmed for social experiment and the reduction of travel speed was also revealed for several chokers of full-scale countermeasure. Based on the analysis of willingness to pay (WTP) of inhabitants for these safety countermeasures which were measured by CVM, it is found that the family with/without children or the driving experience of the choker section have an affect on the WTP. In addition, it is also revealed the change in consciousness for the installation of chokers with time. That is, both the evaluation for convenience of this section and the real sense of the effect by the choker have impact on their WTP.

It is demanded to realize the society anyone can travel freely, and the two-rider bicycle might be a potential, practical means of transportation for persons with reduced mobility (PRM). The purpose of this study is to understand the latent opportunities for use of two-rider bicycles by PRM and welfare service providers from the questionnaire and hearing survey, and to understand the influences of the daily use of two-rider bicycles by welfare service providers from the fact-finding case survey. The results confirmed that there were latent opportunities and some influences by PRM and welfare service providers, it might lead to promotion of using two-rider bicycle for PRM and welfare service providers.