Outlines of My Research Interest

Major Research Fields

Transportation Planning, Transportation Policy

Research Topics

Activity-based Travel Modeling
Activity-based travel analysis has become more popular and seen considerable progress in recent years. One of the fundamental differences between the conventional approach and the activity-based approach is that the activity-based model deals with the individual behavior as the time allocation among various activities and regards the travel as the derived demand from the intrinsic activities. I analyze the travel behavior of not only an individual but also a group from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints.

Valuation of Travel Time Savings
Time saving is one of the most significant sources of benefit in transport projects. The Value of Travel Time Saving (VTTS) is an essential index to calculate the benefit stemming from the travel time savings. A number of researchers have tackled to valuate the VTTS with many methods. There have been, however, still many discussions on the VTTS and its valuation methods. I analyze empirically the basic characteristics of VTTS with econometric models including a time/resource allocation model and a discrete choice model.

Travel Demand Modeling and Economic Evaluation of Transportation Investment
The cost-benefit analysis (CBA) has been introduced into an economic evaluation of transport investment in developed countries for a long time. However, there are still many practical problems remained. I point out the current problems including the basic methods and practical applications. Then I propose a better travel demand modeling coordinated with economic evaluation.

Sustainable Urban Transportation System especially in Developing Countries
To obtain a sustainable city has been recently one of the important issues not only from urban planning concern but also global warming concern. Many cities in developing countries may damage seriously the local/regional/global economy and environment unless some measures are taken against transportation-oriented problems. I tackle this issue as one of transport planners in cooperation with the local people.

Structuring Method of Transportation Problems
It is essential to identify an appropriate problem in making and implementing the public policy. In order to identify the problems, we must understand the problems associated with the policy and we must analyze the problem strucutre. This is not exceptional even in transport planning. I develop a pragmatic methodology to deal with problem structuring in transportation planning.

Citizen Participation in Infrastructure Planning
More public involvement is regarded important in infrastructure planning. An impact of citizen participation, such as public hearing, access to public information, task force meeting, etc., on the planning procedure is analyzed based on the empirical survey. I discuss the way of citizen involvement in transport planning in the lights of law system, socio-economic background, engineering knowledge, psychology, etc.