Tsutomu Yabe

Survey Design to Grasp and Compare User's Attitudes on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Developing Countries

In mitigating urban transportation problems and providing a sustainable transit system, rail-based systems have become popular. While rail-based systems are welcome in many developed countries, it is impractical for cities in developing countries due to the high cost of system building and operation. Thus, a staged or incremental adjustment towards fixed guide way transit implementation of greater interest to many agencies today, and these days it has started developing in terms of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). As it is very new to developing cities, it is a challenge to get the users to understand the system and to grasp their attitude. Besides, there are many other general issues like literacy, lack of a sample frame etc. Survey design needs to be tuned carefully for these cities to obtain a resonant output. Concerning all these problems, a hypothetical questionnaire survey such as Stated Preference (SP) has become popular. This study conducted a survey on BRT implementation with SP as a hypothetical tool at a selected corridor in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. The main objectives were to identify questionnaire design(media) effects, literacy of users, segmental variation, and the important variable(s). In this survey design, system explanation has been set in two slightly different ways (media: TEXT ~ IMAGE) for comparison and it was found that even a slight difference on design affected the users’ response considerably. Income level could not be predicted directly, but car ownership was found to be a good predictor, it was found to be an important variable and it showed a correlation with literacy. (A)

A Study on the Corridor of Urban Public Transport Systems in Japan

This study aimed to examine the applicability of transit axis on Japan, and to acquire the fundamental knowledge for public transportation planning in the future. In this study, the authors extracted the sections with high frequency service of bus or tram as the corridors of urban public transport systems, and clarified the current situations and the characteristics. In analysis, the authors identified the features of the corridors such as characteristics of transportation and commercial aspects through the use of various statistical data This paper concluded that several cities preserve high level transit share of the modal split even if the transit axis have no concept of TOD.

An Analysis on a Trial Operation of Park-and-Cycle System Using an Underground Parking Facility in Yokohama City, Japan

This study evaluates a trial operation of park-and-cycle system in the city center of Yokohama City in 2000. Road network as well as parking spaces in the city center is congested very hard especially on holidays. Traffic congestion causes a variety of problems including environmental pollution, traffic safety problem, decline of urban activities, and so on. This system was proposed in order to alleviate the traffic congestion. On this system car drivers coming into the city center may use a parking space on the fringe of the center and come to destination by bicycle rented at the parking space. Users of the system can keep away from the traffic congestion on the road network in the center. Because citizens in the city and peripheral region were not familiar with the system, the trial operation of the system was designed and executed for two weeks in October 2000. Although several cities have introduced rental-bicycle systems in order to encourage modal shift recently in Japan, this system is quite unique in that the rental port is installed inside the parking facility and that only the users of the parking can borrow bicycles. The trial is, needless to say, the first one in Japan. Through the trial, the system was found to be effective in increasing the number of trips in the center. Many participants on the trial appreciate the system. However, some of the users were dissatisfied with the cycle network in the center.