In this study, we analyzed user recognition and evaluation of the change from the original IC cards of local bus companies to the region-free prepaid transportation IC card by a questionnaire survey. In addition, the optimal design of the point reduction fare system provided by the region-free prepaid IC card is investigated. In the target area, the premium bonus point system was applied when customers topped up the IC card in the former cases, whereas in the latter case, the loyalty point reduction fare system depended on the monthly total paid fare for bus rides. After the change of the IC cards, the fare, after the application of bonus points or point reductions, becomes higher than before. As a results of a questionnaire survey of commuters and residents, it is revealed that more than half of them highly evaluated the region-free IC card, despite the substantial fare increase. Those who were highly satisfied with the region-free IC card tended to increase the frequency of bus usage, while those who were less satisfied tended to reduce it. In addition, students and residents place more importance on the fare itself than on the point reduction rate, while office workers are more sensitive to the reduction rate and the minimum spending amount at which reduction begins, suggesting the need to design a flexible fare and point reduction rate that is appropriate for each demographic group.

The participation of residents is essential for the “Kawamachidukuri”, which aims for the integrated development of rivers and their surrounding areas, to take root in the community. The recall of river-related memories contributes to the participation of residents in the “Kawamachidukuri”, and the visual links from their living area to the river-town node are considered to have an important role in the recall of memories. In this study, open spaces at the river-town node and the visual links at the river-town node were examined for their influence on the recall of river-related memories. The results showed that the visual links to the river-town node were stronger at the nodes with open space than at the nodes without open space and that the stronger the visual links to the node, the more river-related memories were recalled.

The degree that children are able to go out and move around freely without an adult is called children independent mobility (CIM) and is considered to be an important factor in children's health and physical, social, and mental development. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey of parents of elementary school children in Toyohashi city to clarify factors affecting CIM, focusing on travel modes. The results showed that school grade, gender, and anxiety about traffic accidents and crimes had an influence on the distance a child is allowed to walk or ride a bicycle alone. In addition to school grade and gender, the frequency of children using public transportation together with adults and the feeling watched over by surrounding adults were also found to affect the level of acceptance of children riding public transports alone.

In recent years, an increasing number of municipalities have shifted from community bus services to individual transportation services using taxis and private cars. However, it is not easy to ensure both profitability and convenience of the service at the same time, and there are situations in which the service cannot be maintained in its current form. In order to solve these problems, this study focused on a newly proposed “Integrated Sustainable Public Transport System”, a new transport service that integrates volunteer transport drivers and taxis, and conducted a web-based questionnaire survey to understand the social acceptability of this service and to analyze the conditions under which car users accept the role of drivers. As a result, we found that driver compensation and the relationship with passengers are important to increase the driver's willingness to participate in the service, and that the purpose of travel, personal attributes, sympathy and commitment affect the driver's willingness to participate in the service.

Reflecting the recent revisions of tsunami risk assessments in Japan, many municipal governments began to consider automobile use in tsunami evacuation. In order to ensure safety during automobile evacuation under the diverse spatial distribution of evacuees, we propose a method of “advance route notification + indication, ” in which a small number of evacuation routes are informed to residents in advance, and the routes to be actually used are indicated according to the spatial distribution of evacuees at the time of a disaster. This study examined a technological problem that how to prepare a set of multiple routes that can adapt to diverse spatial distributions of evacuees.

The purpose of this study is to obtain knowledge that can be used for railroad operators' measures to improve convenience for foreign visitors to Japan. Using station entry and exit data, we analyzed the daily railway use of foreign visitors to Japan who tour inside major cities. We assume a combination of destination stations as a tour pattern, and we tried to identify similar tour patterns from a large data set with topic model. Since the number of destination stations is limited we used BTM, an effective topic model for short texts, in addition to LDA. Judged from multiple evaluation indicators, it is appropriate to set 30 tour patterns in the BTM. Besides, we found different operators included in the same tour pattern and seasonal feature of tour pattern. With these results, we propose measures to develop travel products and to improve transportation planning.

Various approaches such as AI-based traffic flow measurement using data obtained from various sensors have been tried, but it is difficult for a single sensor to have a wide bird's-eye view, and cooperative observation by several sensors is one of the effective methods. However, it is necessary to estimate in advance the effective placement, installation angle, and quantity of sensors. A method for estimation of camera placement is to construct a method that searches for the number and placement of cameras to maximize the accuracy of object detection by AI based on virtual reality (VR) simulations, but the number of possible combinations makes it difficult to calculate in a realistic time. Therefore, in this paper, we define a evaluation function based on the results of object detection and solve the problem under this function. Concretely, based on the evaluation function proposed in this paper, we search for combinations of objects in the VR space that are detected by the AI with less overlap. This makes the proposed method less computationally intensive than the conventional methods that searches the entire combinations. In this paper, experiments are conducted to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of computational complexity. Also, the robustness of the camera deployment searched by the proposed method is also confirm.

The route search log data on routes searched by prospective travelers on public transportation route search systems while planning trips can be indicative of intended travel routes in the near future. The Information recorded in the log data includes not only spatial information such as departure and destination, but also temporal information such as search request time and search-designated travel time. This study defines prior route search time as the time difference between the search request time and search-designated travel time, and analyze the factors that influence the prior route search time. Specifically, this study clarifies the factors that influence whether the prior route search time is zero or more than one minute. And then, this study clarifies the factors that influence the length of the prior route search time. From the estimated results, the searcher's travel purposes are inferred and the characteristics of the prior route search time are showed.

The geometry of the road network significantly affects drivers' route choice behavior. Among indicators of road network geometry, the lengths of links and connection relations have been widely focused on. On the other hand, indicators related to angles have not received much attention so far. The directional change between neighboring links may affect the route choice behavior among the angular indicators. For example, a route that is similar to a U-turn with a large angle right/left turn is less likely to be desired by drivers. On the other hand, routes that require large detours to reduce the directional change and increase the travel distance are also undesirable. The importance of the angular indicator in route choice behavior can be measured by determining the effect of the directional change on drivers' route choices. In this study, a route choice model with the indicator of directional change between neighboring links is built. In addition, the parameters of the proposed model were estimated using actual route choice data on an urban scale, and the effect of angular indicators on route choice was examined.

In this study, we propose a general method for quantitatively capturing one-dimensional metropolitan flows based on the Mobile Spatial Statistical Data by Docomo Insight Marketing Co. Ltd. with residential municipality information. We propose a method for setting up aggregation zones that can ensure calculation accuracy while aggregating a large amount of the hourly population data by mesh and residential municipalities. In the proposed method, the distance traveled can be easily calculated based on the zone index number by defining aggregation zones classified by distance and direction from a representative origin in the city center, and by taking into account the location relationship with the residential area. We applied the method to the Sapporo metropolitan area and showed fluctuations under normal conditions and to quantify the impact of the heavy snowfall disaster in Sapporo in early February 2022.

In public transportation, there are cases that general users cannot give up their seat. It is thought that the reason why general users are not given up their seats is that they do not understand the words and deeds that are no stress for the handicap people. Therefore, in this study, we aim to grasp the behavior that is no stress for the handicap people. The questionnaire survey and analysis revealed that “talking to” was the most common considerate action for all attributes except for the injured, priority passengers wearing a help mark in the standard seat, and persons with lower limb disabilities. “Bailing out” was also a considerate action for persons with internal disabilities and those with lower limb disabilities, and “walking away” was also a considerate action for pregnant women, persons aged 65 or older, and those with lower limb disabilities. Future prospects are to disseminate the obtained results through posters, announcements, and slogans in train stations and trains.

For enhancing the sustainability of public transportation operations in rural areas, redesign of bus route network is often considered as one of the possible measures. In particular, Mito City in Ibaraki Prefecture has an excessive number of buses operating in the central city area, which may have a negative impact on the surrounding traffic flow. However, the planning of such route redesign often does not proceed smoothly, and it is questionable whether the effect of such route redesign is properly evaluated quantitatively at the planning stage. Therefore, in this study, the characteristics of ODs are firstly analyzed by using bus passengers OD data, and secondly the operation patterns that are considered to be beneficial to both bus operators and bus users are examined by considering the introduction of express bus services as well as trunk/branch line division. Finally, the impact of the proposed redesign of bus services are analyzed from the viewpoints of travel time reduction, reduction of operating costs for bus operators, and the occurrence of transfers.

In Japan, there are many traffic fatalities caused by pedestrian crossing obstruction at unsignalized pedestrian crosswalks, and it is necessary to understand the factors that contribute to pedestrian crossing obstruction in order to prevent such accidents. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the age group of pedestrians crossing at unsignalized pedestrian crosswalks and the behavior of vehicles, with a particular focus on children under elementary school age. The results of the study showed that, first, the rate of pausing at unsignalized crosswalks was higher for elementary school students and younger or elderly age groups than for adults; second, at the observed sites, the rate of vehicles failing to stop was higher for elementary school students and younger than for adults or elderly age groups; and third, the rate of vehicles failing to stop was higher for elementary school students and younger than for adults or elderly age groups at the observed sites. Second, the speed of vehicles that failed to stop was reduced at 14 to 23 m away from the unsignalized crosswalk when the crossers were elementary school students or younger than when the crossers were adults or elderly. These results indicate that drivers make decisions about whether or not to pause at unsignalized crosswalks based on the age group of the crosser, and that they pause more when the crosser is an elementary school student or younger than when the crosser is any other age group, suggesting that the presence of children of elementary school age or younger at unsignalized crosswalks encourages drivers to take action that contributes to traffic safety. This suggests that the presence of children of elementary school age and younger at unsignalized crosswalks encourages drivers to take actions that contribute to traffic safety.

Bicycle traffic space is basically provided by bicycle paths, bicycle lanes, and roads with mixed traffic for bicycles and cars. However, in Nagoya, there are many sections of bicycle-pedestrian paths that are visually separated by signs, roaad surface markings and pictograms. It is assumed that the characteristics and accident risks of bicycle accidents differ depending on the type of bicycle traffic space development. In this study, the accident rate of bicycle accidents was calculated for the sections of roads in Nagoya where bicycle traffic volume was observed. Differences in the risk of bicycle accidents due to the type of bicycle traffic space and bicycle-pedestrian paths were assessed. In addition, road traffic environment factors affecting the number of accidents on bicycle-pedestrian paths were identified by negative binomial regression model.

Tourist stops during returning home are important to disperse traffic jams and vitalize the tourism industry. Although many studies focused on the length of planned stops during tourism activities, few studies focused on stop behavior during returning home. This paper focused on the tourist stop, using GPS data and route search data. The study revealed the temporal characteristics by aggregating stop records and factors of those stops by the parametric duration model. It was found that stops are widely distributed within tourist areas and that stops occur more frequently along major roads, including roadside stations. The estimated result indicates that the condition of traffic jams relates to the length of tourist stops. The results imply that tourist stops may differ from a typical tourist stay.

The “MyRide Noruru”, which was fully introduced in Takahagi City in 2022, operates an on-demand bus service during off-peak hours with the medium-sized buses that are used as a regular route bus in the morning and evening peak hours. Noruru can be called in real time, and passengers can freely select its boarding and alighting points as long as they are between designated bus stops. This style of switching between regular route buses and on-demand buses at different times of the day is relatively rare, and we thought it would be beneficial to clarify user awareness and actual conditions of transport mode choice in order to consider the division of roles and cooperation among multiple transport modes. Therefore, in this study, we conducted an interview survey of “MyRide-Noruru” users, and analyzed the merits and demerits of “MyRide-Noruru” and its impact on the use of existing taxi services.

This study proposes the Cooperative Token Mechanism, as a new allocation mechanism to achieve the following three goals in realizing efficient use of urban transportation infrastructure: 1) fairness of opportunity without payments, 2) easy preference elicitation by allowing users to consider when to use the infrastructure, and 3) efficient use of the infrastructure capacity. For theoretical analysis and performance evaluation of the mechanism, we formulated the equilibrium state under the mechanism, expressed it as a variational inequality problem, and proposed a solution algorithm. Numerical experiments show that the mechanism approximates the social optimal state and has advantages over simple mechanisms such as a first-come-first-served basis under assumed conditions.

For walkable city development, it becomes increasingly important to understand diverse needs of street users in order to develop multi-functional streets. By integrating image recognition and online questionnaires for walkability evaluation, we can make an evaluation for a variety of people and streets in a systematic way. The aim of this study is to construct an online evaluation system for domestic and international streets with their 360-degree videos classified by image recognition, and to analyze its applicability to walkability evaluation. First, the indicators of spatial elements in the street videos were measured by image recognition, and were classified by cluster analysis. An online questionnaire with the videos was constructed to analyze the impacts of street design on walkability evaluation, taking account of social profiles. As a result, the indicators of street design measured by image recognition accounted for the walkability evaluation along with the social profiles.

In local cities, last mile initiatives for the elderly are becoming increasingly important. In this study, we examined transit between buses and cabs as a means of ensuring last-mile transportation. We conducted a questionnaire survey of residents in the Fujioka and Sanage areas of Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, to understand the increase in activity opportunities and resistance to transferring between cabs and buses. The survey showed that those who do not own a private car, those who have a short walking distance, and those who use only buses and trains are willing to use the free transfer service between a bus and a cab. Conjoint analysis of the willingness to use various fare discount plans for transferring between buses and cabs revealed that the utility values were negative for the following reasons: 3-day advance reservation, 500 yen after the cab discount, transfer at a bus stop without a roof, and transfer time between a cab and a bus was 10 minutes or longer.

In Japan, expressways are frequently congested, and appropriate traffic management measures are becoming increasingly important in order to realize smooth road traffic. In this paper, as a measure to change the behavior of expressway users using the concept of gamification, which has been utilized in recent years, we assumed the introduction of a game-type service to alleviate traffic congestion in expressway, and analyzed the characteristics of users that would increase the possibility of changing their behavior by introducing measures using gamification. After organizing characteristics of expressway users using cluster analysis, we conducted logistic regression analysis using the intention to participate in the game for alleviating traffic congestion and the potential for behavior change as the objective variables. As a result, the characteristics of expressway users who could be the target for promoting measures to change behavior by gamification were clarified, and it was suggested that the introduction of gamification in measures for behavior change could increase the potential of expressway users to change their behavior.

New individualized transportation modes are emerging with the development of IT in recent years. In this study, we consider that two types of transportation modes, the traditional bus and individual personal movers (PM), can be set in a suburban station area of a metropolitan area. Further, we compared two cases with different positioning of PM in terms of inclusion into the regional public transportation system. When the PM is treated privately, the operating cost is borne by each user according to the number of times he or she uses the mode. On the other hand, when the mode is positioned as public transportation, the burden is optimized by including the users of bus transportation, also. As a result of analyzing the changes in the total social surplus and the cost of travel between ODs, the public inclusion of PM subsidizes bus transportation and increases the total social surplus. In addition, the cost of traveling between nodes far from the station is set higher, while the cost of traveling toward the station is lower, stimulating demand on the trunk axis. This indicates that the inclusion of PM in public transportation has a high affinity with compact city policies.

As Japan has entered a phase of long-term population decline, facilities that must serve a certain trade area population are retreating. Consequently, future access to higher-order urban functions might become increasingly difficult. This study targeted facility locations in core cities and surrounding municipalities with declining populations. Moreover, we identified trends in facility location based on typology. Findings revealed an increase in core areas which currently have facilities, but which will find it difficult to secure facilities on their own in the future. The data indicate the importance of wide-area collaboration among core areas, such as the fact that there are core areas which can secure facilities by collaborating with other centers to supplement their facilities. These findings suggest that, when considering the maintenance of core areas, one must consider not only trends in the locations of facilities within core areas, but also from a wider perspective, including the network between core areas.

In Japan, numerous instances exist where the development of transportation infrastructure, including measures for disaster prevention, has experienced substantial delays in comparison to established plans, primarily due to fiscal constraints. However, if the clear contribution of infrastructure investment to reducing disaster damages and improving the transportation network for long-term fiscal improvement is established, it would enhance the feasibility of necessary investments. In this study, we constructed a model that describes the local tax revenues of each prefecture, which is connected to existing macroeconomic and regional models, with the aim of enabling analysis of the effects of transportation infrastructure investment on "future fiscal balance." As a result, we have achieved a higher accuracy of local tax revenue estimation compared to conventional estimation methods. Additionally, a case study was conducted on the effects of developing expressway networks, suggesting the potential for estimating the regional fiscal the long-term improvement effects of infrastructure investment as a means of facilitating disaster prevention investment.

This paper examines the impact of autonomous taxi (AT) acceptability on the utility function of a modal choice model. To this end, an online stated preference (SP) survey was conducted in March 2022, targeting 1,000 residents of the 23 wards of Tokyo. The assessment of automated driving acceptability employed the methodology established by Hulse et al. (2018). The findings of this study reveal that acceptability of ATs is notably higher among individuals within working-age and high-income brackets, aligning with the conclusions of prior research. Moreover, the estimation results from the SP model, which incorporates acceptability as a variable, indicate that acceptability significantly influences AT choice. While the estimation of acceptability using the ordered logit model showed limited precision, incorporating the expected acceptability values derived from the Ordered Logit model into the SP model yielded significant parameters. This highlights the importance of combining the SP and Ordered Logit models for a comprehensive understanding of AT acceptability’s effect on modal choice.

In order to realize the vision of walkable city, it is important to generate economic values for walkable places in urban core areas. The Ds indicators to affect travel behaviors may be influential factors for the values, but the Design indicators of street design has been subjectively measured. Recently, the objective measurement of street design indicators has become possible according to the advancement of image-recognition technologies. This study analyzed the relationship between the Ds indicators and land prices at a street level in urban station areas, considering neighborhood characteristics. The analysis was made with the Ds indicators on spatial scales of a neighborhood and a road. The result showed that the relationships between the Ds indicators and land prices differs by the neighborhood type.

A model that simultaneously determines the generalized payment by OD and the public transportation network to maximize the total social surplus was applied to a public transportation system in a suburban metropolitan area, and the impact on efficiency and equity of applying fare systems that comply with distance-based fare system and uniform fare system were analyzed. In terms of efficiency, it was found that the total social surplus was almost the same regardless of the fare system applied, except in cases where the fare level was too low to maintain an appropriate network. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of fairness, compliance with the existing fare system may increase the difference in consumer surplus by residential area. In particular, the distance-based fare system tends to undermine the fairness, and a uniform fare system is preferable.