Changing Concept of Urban Transport Planning
Hirohide Konami (Mr. & Dr.)
Executive Director, The Research Institute of National Land
Policy
Abstract
During the past decades of years, how to overcome the increasing
traffic demand has been the purpose of transport planning. But now,
population in Japan began to decrease since 2006 and also people
are getting age. As a result, the concept of transport planning in
Japan is gradually changing such as how to save the maintenance
cost, how to supply transport service to aged and handicapped
people, how to renovate the urban area into the more convenient and
efficient pattern from the transport viewpoint, how to supply more
high speed and comfortable transport and how to construct stronger
facilities against natural hazards. This paper tries to introduce
such tendency in Japan.
Keywords
transport planning, transport management, transport service for
aged people
1. Introduction
The fundamental key factors of urban transport planning would be
as follows:
1) Estimation of urban size and population
2) Analysis on urban pattern and geographic condition
3) Estimation of land use, traffic generation and
distribution
4) Estimation of the level of economy development, income level
and car ownership
5) Consideration of the necessary service for the aged and
wheelchair people
6) Environmental assessment
7) Counter measures for the risk of natural hazards
8) Choice of the affordable technology
9) Analysis of the land ownership and land acquisition
system
Many years ago, in 1960's and 70's, we were mostly interested in
the estimation of future increase of transport demand and the
proposals based on the estimation. In those days, we were drawing
new railway routes, new highway routes, urban development project
areas, reservation areas and many other proposals on the map. But
now, Japan is facing the population decrease since 2006, and
attacked by huge earthquakes and tsunami in 2011. And also people
are getting age and there appeared high aged society. This paper
tries to examine these problems.
2. New requirements for transport planning
We have studied a lot of techniques of transport demand
estimation based on the data of traffic survey, population census,
economy, various proposals of development, environment and many
other data. And we proposed many new routes of railways and
highways. But now we are facing the stabilized or decreasing
traffic demand except in the metropolitan areas and facing the
following problems.
1) Structures such as bridges and tunnels are getting age and
need to reinforce in some way. This cost may require the large
amount of public money and may cause the difficulty to share money
for new projects. Therefore, transport planning in these days put
more importance on the life cycle cost of the structures including
the maintenance cost.
2) Aged drivers over 70 or 80 years old have the tendency of
high risk of traffic accident and the government recommends them to
return the drivers license. Then it becomes necessary to provide
some alternative transport services for them.
3) In rural areas, the population decrease and the abolition of
local establishments including schools and manufactures caused the
decrease of passengers of local railway and bus routes. Then those
lines are facing the risk of abolition.
3. Suggestions for the new concept of transport planning
Planners may not be interested in the fact happening in Japan
but it would be important for then to know it.
1) Life cycle cost
Bridges, tunnels and pavement are the main topics of life cycle
cost. They are basically the design problems but planners would be
better to know such matters. In fact, every bridge will come to the
end of life about 100 years after the construction and the design
engineer should pay attention for the easier maintenance by means
of materials or paintings.(1) Advanced monitoring system of
tiredness is also important because the earlier check of tiredness
will save the maintenance life cycle cost by about 30 to
50%.(2)
2) Transport service in aged society
There are two kinds of the transport problems for aged people.
One is the problem in the big city. Another is that of rural
areas.
Aged people in the big city can use bus and railway but they
cannot walk long distance and difficult to use staircases. It is
the same in case of a wheelchair person. Therefore, Japanese
government established Barrier Free Act in 2006 and promoting the
improvement of transport facilities, public buildings, such as city
hall, school, hospital, hotel, library and so on, and the barrier
elimination in public parks. Every transport should be barrier free
for aged people and wheelchair person. We constructed many overhead
pedestrian bridges in the intersections about half a century ago
but now we need to attach easy slopes for wheelchair to those over
bridges or prepare again the ground level pedestrian crossing.
Elevators and escalators have been introduced in many railway
stations. Planners should pay more attention to keep the space for
those additional facilities.
Table 1 shows the change of transport mode from 1998 to 2008 in
Tokyo metropolitan region, we may say Greater Tokyo with the
population of more than 30 million.
Table 1 Transport mode in Greater Tokyo (%) (3)
Year
Car
Rail
Bus
Two wheel
Walking
1998
33
26
2
17
22
2008
29
29
3
16
21
In the case of the trip transferred from some mode to different
mode, only one mode is selected by the priority order of rail, bus,
car, two wheels and walking.
Rail Bus Car Motorcycle
Bicycle Walking
Fig. 1 Comparison of transport mode in Central Tokyo and Greater
Tokyo
Table 1 and Figure 1 tell us that the rail and bus transport
began to replace the car transport within these 10 years. This is
the first experience for us, while we had been just considering the
increase of automobile usage. There may be two reasons. One is the
development of railway network and another is the peoples change
such as aged people started to return their driver's license and
young people have a tendency to live near from railway stations
without cars. Along with another experience that the total
population of the country started to decrease in 2006, the Japanese
government is trying to renovate the cities into compact and
networking ones. This is a new aspect of transport planning.
For this purpose, the governments are trying to supply better
bus services including demand system or one coin (100yen or 1 USD)
community microbus service. In case of Tokyo Metropolitan
Government, aged people equal or over 70 years old living in the
administration area can buy one year ticket good for bus of all
companies and subways managed by the metropolitan government by
only 1000 yen (about 10 USD) or 20,000 yen (about 200 USD) if the
person have the taxable income of 1.25 million yen (12,500 USD) or
over in the year before.
Aged people in rural areas are more desperate. They were living
with their sons and daughters in decades of years ago but now
living alone or just with an aged couple. Therefore, after
returning the driver's license, they don't have any transport tool.
The best way to solve the problem would be to recommend them to
transfer to the town center where everyday life will be completed
within walking distance. But many of them cannot do so because of
the difficulty to shoulder the transfer cost or the sticky mind to
stay in the same place. Then the municipality should continue to
supply for them not only lifelines, such as road, water and
electricity but also transport service such as demand bus or
community bus. Delivery cost of daily supply such as food, mail,
and medicine, if necessary, is also expensive.
As a whole, transport planning should also pay attention to the
future society of aged people.
3) Abolition of existing transport service
There are many proposals to abolish the existing bus and railway
services in rural areas. In case of railway, replacing by rail-bus
or normal bus would be the most capable solution. In case of the
abolition of existing bus service, the problem becomes more
difficult. The introduction of the demand bus that will operate
based on the request through telephone call, the community microbus
managed by the people and taxi or membership vehicle would be the
good solution. Automatic driven vehicle together with GPS
technology may become the best solution in the future.
4. Other fundamental factors(4)
1) Level of economy development, income level and car
ownership
The level of economy development gives the great influence on
the transport planning in both ways. One is the construction and
maintenance cost and another is the capability of fare payment of
passengers.
New construction cost will be covered not only by the
governmental fund but also by private investment expecting the
return from the fare and development benefit around the stations.
In Japanese case, the share of maintenance cost is quickly
increasing and new construction is facing difficulty because of the
shortage of governmental money.
Capability of fare payment depends on the income level of
passengers and also depends on the share system of commuting cost
of each company. The company in Japan mostly shoulders commuting
cost. Private railway company can expect the development benefit by
means of the development project around the stations if they can
purchase the cheap land before the railway construction.
In order to promote the public transport usage, governmental
subsidies for the construction cost and partially management cost
is essential. Then fare could be kept cheap and usage of rail and
bus will be promoted.
It is also important to consider the speed of the urban growth.
We experienced many problems as follows:
a) Because of the delay of infrastructure development, poor
service of railway and bus caused unexpected congestions in peak
hours and passengers should have kept waiting for a long time or
packed like materials in the carrier.
b) During the process of national development, there happens the
flood of two wheel vehicles. Then transport mode will be gradually
changed to cars. The lack of road capacity will cause the
unendurable traffic jam followed by the severe air pollution.
The study of Traffic Demand Management started last century in
Singapore but the fruitful result hasnt been found. Railway and
urban expressway construction seems to be the only good solution if
combined together with the land use control.
Car ownership has the strongest influence on the choice of
transport mode. In fact, car ownership of rural areas in Japan is
almost one vehicle for one person. On the other hand, people in the
central area of big cities dont feel the necessity of owning a car.
Car sharing system is developing in those areas.
2) Environmental assessment
Global climate change is now critical situation. Transport
sector is so much responsible for CO2 exhaustion and the share of
transport sector is about 20%. Therefore, we should lead the modal
change from car to bus or train and promote the introduction of
environment friendly transport system.
3) Risk of natural hazards
The risk of natural hazards is becoming more important in Japan
in these days because we experienced so a big earthquake and
Tsunami in 2011 and also facing the unexpected heavy rainfall
caused by the climate change. Transport system is the most
important system to keep and rehabilitate the life in those areas.
Therefore, double link or triple link of transport system,
hopefully by different modes, are expected in main routes.
4) Level of affordable technology
The consideration for affordable technology is very important
especially in the under developing stage. Speed, comfortableness,
safety and construction technology should be carefully
examined.
This may be not the planning problem but the management or
administration problem. For example, the construction cost of
automatic driven railway is very expensive if we compare with the
manpower driven simple operating system, and elevated railway is
good for road traffic but the construction cost is expensive. The
traffic signals with the areal control system are expensive but it
is worth for the traffic congested areas.
In such way, affordable technology changes by the level of
economy of the region. Planners should carefully choose the
suitable technologies.
5) Land acquisition system
Land acquisition or land ownership system is also important
factor to plan the transport facilities. In Japan, land ownership
is very strong and the land acquisition cost is increasing. Then
transport planner should learn enough about those facts in advance.
Land Readjustment Project works very well in Japan for the
acquisition of land for highway and railway in urbanized areas
because through the land relocation system, reduced land or
pre-purchased land within the project area will be easily relocated
to the right of way.
It was said that the city plan is carefully checked and decided
by the authority and never been changed in general. Therefore, the
roads decided by the city plan is on the map of the scale of 1/2500
and tall buildings are prohibited within the planned right of way
and some of those roads remain without completed for more than 70
years. Then there happens such discussion as whether or not they
should be reviewed again. This happens because of the strong
private land ownership in Japan. In case of the urban renewal
project or land readjustment project, the review of those
city-planned roads is rather easy based on the discussion among
landowners.
5. Conclusion
Traditional transport planning based on the traffic and economy
data is still important in the under developing areas. But in the
case of population decrease and the people got the age of 70s and
80s, the importance of public transport becomes lager and the
maintenance cost becomes heavier year by year. Therefore, it
becomes more important for transport planners to coordinate with
the management groups such as road maintenance, bus and railway
operating company, medical and social service, and so on. It would
be also important to pay more attention for life cycle cost,
natural environment, and natural hazards.
Barrier free transport system would be the basic concept in the
future.
References:
(1) "Examples of Saving Life Cycle Cost", Ministry of Land,
Infrastructure and
Transport,
http://www.mlit.go.jp/tec/chiebukuro/database.cgi?mode=0&cat=5
(2) "Comparison of Life Cycle Cost of RC Bridge and PC
Bridge
https://kk.jcca.or.jp/oteire/pdf/h27/05.pdf
(3) "Person Trip Survey Reports", Ministry of Land,
Infrastructure and Transport
(4) Urban Transport Policy, Text of JICA training course
Comprehensive Urban Planning, Hirohide Konami, 2016
Author: Hirohide Konami (Mr. & Dr.)
Born in 1942 in Tokyo, Japan. After graduated from the
University of Tokyo, Faculty of Urban Engineering in 1966, studied
at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University in 1971-72,
and worked for the national government for 31 years. After
retirement from the government, experienced the professors in the
University of the Philippines, Toyo University, Tokyo Jogakkan
College and Teikyo Heisei University for 17 years. Then assigned to
the present position in 2012.
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20
Rail & Bus Car 2 wheel Walk
Central Tokyo 1998 & 2008
Large Tokyo 1998 & 2008 New York 2001 London 2007 Paris
2002
20
Rail & Bus Car 2 wheel Walk
Central Tokyo
1998 & 2008
Large Tokyo
1998 & 2008
New York 2001
London 2007
Paris 2002
