Amano Keiko

The objective of this study is to analyze how the use of free passes influent on lifestyles of suburb inhabitants around train stations. Many suburb residential areas have developed as bedroom community in Japan. Today, however, such areas have many problems: reduction of population, aging of inhabitants, and so on. With aging of inhabitants, the luck of elderly people's QOL is getting more and more serious. Some measures have been taken in such areas, but they have not had enough effect. On the other hand, urban areas also have serious problems of hollowing. So as to deal with this, the concept of "Compact City" is proposed and adopted on some laws, but few cities have realized this concept.

This research targets the semi-public management business policy of the bus done in big cities in South Korea. It aims to understand the role of a related organization and the corporate structure (route, income management, charge discount, and infrastructure equipment) by the municipality's being involved in a public, traffic policy.

This study aims to grasp the local background of some areas where the community bus has been operated since the Road Transport Act was revised in 2002. Twelve characteristic areas studied include the successful cases, the cases where attempts were made as to the selection of new models of vehicle as well as new service routes, and the cases where the operation was assigned to non-governmental organizations. The results of the study are as follows : 1. In a large urban area where a number of different public transportations had been in service, efforts were made to improve the transportation network by connecting some of the existing services, to wit, the efforts to fill the gap where the public transportation had not been easily available. The new service was designed not as an independent body but as part of the entire network. 2. In some local cities, the community bus was introduced to substitute the public service, which had been abrogated on account of the cost performance being below break-even, and to improve the public transportation as a whole. The local government, however, had to cover a deficit when it showed. It is to be noted, on the contrary, that, in some of these cities, the coefficient of utilization often rose thanks to the efforts, for instance, to remodel the bus on the basis of the responses to a questionnaire which the local administration distributed from time to time. 3. In majority of the areas where population had continued to decrease, the local administration had to reorganize its public transportation system when the theretofore bus service was no longer available. As there were no bus companies to turn to, the administration assigned the newly organized bus service to various bodies such as a local business association, NPO, and/or a taxi company. In other words, the bus service pattern became richer than in other areas owing to a scheme contrived to meet the need of respective areas.