Japanese central and local government have started a full-scale development of bicycle facilities. But there have been several issues of bicycle travel spacing between vehicles on roadway. For example, there are a lot of on-street parked vehicles on bicycle lane. These parked vehicles have occupied the left edge of the road and decreased safety, comfort and utilization. Recently, Cycling Simulator (CS) is worth taking world-wide notice of one of the tools for not only accident analysis but also traffic education and road environment evaluation. CS have benefits to get the data of running behavior safely in dangerous situation even for elderly people and children. In this study, we have developed Cycling Simulator “Morics” for traffic safety analysis and conducted the experiments of overtaking on-street parked vehicles. And we analyzed the effects of road structure and approaching vehicles from rear on overtaking behavior of bicycle users. In the experimental results, we confirmed that different lane-positioned approaching vehicles from rear and bicycle lane have significantly effects on the speed adjustment behavior and overtaking-start position of the cyclists. And also, we confirmed that different lane-positioned approaching vehicles from rear have significantly effects on the perception reaction time with the mental workload experiment.

View full abstract

On the urban expressway, the toll system was changed from the uniform toll system to distance-based toll system at 2012. In the distance-based toll system, setting of a variety toll form is possible. The elastic operation depending toll setting is not assumed, because the toll rate is decided based on a repayment principle of a construction cost of the urban expressway. In the study, substantial analysis is executed about the applicability of the distance-based toll for individual route based on the progress of the toll collection technology by the spread of ETC system. The traffic assignment model based on the distance-based toll of the urban expressway for large scale road network is developed. It is suggested the proper pricing method by the combination of route-based toll by setting the distance-based toll according to the travel route. It can be suggested the elastic pricing of the urban expressway in consideration of a marginal cost.

View full abstract

This study clarifies the impact of flextime and parking congestion on the temporal distribution of traffic demand and morning rush hour congestion. To this end, we develop a model based on Arnott et al. (Arnott, R., de Palma, A., and Lindsey, R.: A temporal and spatial equilibrium analysis of commuter parking, Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 301–335, 1991) in which commuters choose their departure times from home and parking locations in a city with a bottleneck and parking spaces. We then show the properties of our model by analyzing equilibrium with and without flextime. The analysis reveals that parking congestion leads to temporal traffic dispersion when all firms adopt fixed work schedules, while it causes temporal traffic concentration when all firms adopt flexible work schedules. Furthermore, the bottleneck congestion is completely eliminated and the social optimum is achieved by assigning parking locations to commuters and introducing flextime.

View full abstract

In urban railway, heavy congestion can be observed in the proximity of gate exit on the platform due to the congestion of morning rush hour. In this study, congestion charge for railway car is proposed and its effect on the congestion alleviation on the platform is measured. In the analysis, survival analysis is employed for estimating willingness to pay for congestion charge and proper price for the congestion charge is determined. On the basis of the result of survival analysis, passengers in the congested cars are shifted to non-congested cars. Subsequently, impact of congestion alleviation is measured by using pedestrian movement simulation, Viswalk. As a result of simulation analysis, in case 20 and 100 yen are charged for congested cars, it is revealed that the number of pedestrian in the proximity of west gate exit at peak time is reduced by 27 and 25 pedestrians and delay time per pedestrian is shortened by 12.25 and 16.81 seconds, respectively. Consequently, congestion charge on the railway cars is an effective measure to alleviate the congestion on the platform.

View full abstract