Masayoshi Tanishita

A feasibility study on EV-sharing application to residential area and its characteristics

Car sharing has currently become widely adopted throughout Western Europe and North America according to the unique strengths of being an alternative means of transport in reducing number of car ownership, traffic congestion, parking spaces and environmental impacts. However, if this new mobility is applied in a developing city, particularly, Bangkok residential area where traffic and environmental situation are critical, what factors would it need in order to arrive at the success of car sharing application? The aim of this paper is to find whether or not there is the feasibility to apply electric vehicle sharing in Bangkok residential area.

Impact of regional population density on walking behavior

ABSTRACT Land use can influence walking (measured by the number of steps) and so the health of people. This paper presents the result of empirical research on the impact of regional population densities (inhabitants per inhabitable area) on the number of steps (all steps, both outdoors and indoors). With data collected from almost 11,000 respondents in 148 Japanese regions, we estimate polynomial regression models, the total number of steps being the dependent variable and densities being the main independent variable. Regional population density significantly affects the number of steps after controlling for individual and household attributes. The estimated population density that maximizes the number of steps is around 11,000 persons/km2. Increasing densities, up to levels of around 11,000 inhabitants/km2, could increase walking and consequently the health of inhabitants. The population density elasticity of the number of steps is 0.046–0.049 in a simple log linear regression model without a peak.

Analysis of households' electricity, gas and gasoline demand using micro data from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure

For building a sustainable city, it is essential to understand the energy use behaviour of households. In this paper, I analyse the relationship between a household’s electricity, gas, and gasoline consumption, using data from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure of Japan. Then considering household characteristics, price, income and population density, elasticities of these energy demands are estimated using regression analysis. As a result, the following three major conclusions are obtained: (1) correlation among households’ electricity, gas, and gasoline consumption are low, (2) price and income elasticities are differentiated by an equivalent income level, and (3) with regards to population density, elasticity of gasoline is negative but those of electricity and gas are positive.

Optimal Market Penetration Rates of VICS

VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System) is a digital data communication system which provides prompt and useful information on current traffic conditions — such as traffic congestion, accidents, or link-travel time — to drivers via car navigation equipment. VICS was described in detail in Chapter 5.

FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH SAFETY OF PASSENGER CARS

In this paper, the authors examine the relationship between vehicle characteristics, fuel economy, and the occurrence rate of accidents and safety. The conventional method of analysis for passenger car safety is an evaluation using empirical data sets collected in a laboratory using risk of death and injury with the assumption that such accidents have already occurred. Instead of using this method, researchers examined the occurrence rate of fatal accidents and accidents involving injury using a negative binomial regression in terms of occurrence rates for fatal accidents and injury-incurring accidents and taking into account the influence of driver-related factors and vehicle characteristics. It was concluded that the comparison of adjusted occurrence rates for accidents and excluding driver characteristics between types of cars yielded no difference. Suggestions for various correlations as deduced from the methods employed are presented.

A Study on Improvement of Estimation Method for international maritime Freight Flows

A past study by the authors proposed a method to estimate maritime freight flows using metric tons and the twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU). In order to clarify the accuracy of the estimation method, this paper describes the characteristic of the existing freight flow statistics shown in Japan, Indonesia and Hong Kong, and the characteristic of the estimation results for those three countries/regions. From the relation between the characteristic of statistics and the characteristic of estimation results, the authors show that the accuracy of the estimation results is not different from existing statistics.