Table 6-2. Domestic passenger transportation trend in Japan
Unit:
Mil people Year Railway Bus Taxi Air aviation Shipping
1985 19,085 6,998 3,192 44 154
1990 21,939 6,500 3,159 65 163
1995 22,630 5,756 2,703 78 149
2000 21,647 4,803 2,384 93 110
2005 21,963 4,244 2,173 94 103
2006 22,244 4,241 2,165 97 99
2007 22,841 4,264 2,095 95 101
2008 22,976 4,304 1,984 91 99
2009 22,724 4,178 1,909 84 92
2010 22,669 4,158 1,783 82 85
2011 22,632 4,118 1,660 79 84
2012 23,042 4,125 1,640 86 87
2013 23,606 4,176 1,648 92 88
2014 23,600 4,175 1,557 95 86
Source: Transport Policy White Book, (MLIT, 2016) Aggregated based on: Railway transport statistics, Car transport statistics, Domestic shipping transport statistics, Air transport statistics, Transport and Tourism General Policy Bureau
For passenger transportation, the role of railway is majority and trend to increase since 1980s. In 1985, railway passenger satisfied approximately 65% demand of passenger.
The role of this passenger transportation mode continuously increased years afterward.
Recently, railway passenger transportation mode takes care approximately 80% of passenger demand. Along with the expanding of railway passenger transportation, road passenger transportation, which include buses and taxis have been narrowed up its market share from 34.6% in 1980s to 19.42% in present. Air and domestic shipping are minorities in the passenger transportation system. The contributions of them in term of trip number at this present time are just about 0.3% each.
It is clearly that for freight and passenger, the different modes appear different role. For freight transportation, road transportation mode is major mode and take care more than 90% in total freight transportation demand. On another side, railway transportation is the major mode for passenger travel demand.
Transportation Policy for Japan, period from 2014 – 2020 under the Law No. 92 of Dec.
4, 2013 (Transportation Policy Basic Plan, MLIT, 2015). The general transportation policy plan 2014 – 2020 covers aspects to encourage the Japanese economy, reduce environment affects, increase the integration to make traveler more comfortable...etc. The plan also considers carefully the development of transportation to promote inbound, strengthening the domestic tourism, as well as focusing on the Tokyo Olympic 2020 (White Book MLIT, 2015). The structure of the policy plan aims to three basic directions:
First, to realize user-friendly transport that contributes to the rich lives of the citizens, focusing on four points:
• To reconstruct the regional transport networks under local governments’ initiatives, coordinating with town planning policies: To vitalize local public transport services under coordination with relevant measures to create active and unique communities, taking into account population decrease, super-aging, and reliance on automobiles.
• To encourage deployment of various transport services taking into account local circumstances: To provide new transport services with convenience, comfort, and efficiency responding to changing society with population decrease and super-aging.
• To make barrier-free transport more familiar: To realize the smooth transportation in the super-aging community and the society where all can participate in, considering Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games.
• To further raise the service levels for passenger transport and logistics: To improve worldwide leading field in transporting people & goods to help realize the rich lives of the citizens.
Second, to build up the inter-regional / international passenger transport and logistics networks that create a foundation for growth and prosperity. This direction focuses on:
• To strengthen competitiveness of Japan international transport network: To develop foundation for aviation and maritime transport as a requirement to grow along with Asian and global growth.
• To boost regional flow of people and goods: To help vitalize the entire nation through promotion of the flow of people, including foreigners, and industrialization of and migration to rural areas, by increasing speed and utilizing regional networks.
• To enhance coordination with tourism policies toward receiving 20 million foreign visitors: To help and encourage foreign visitors and domestic tourists who visit all around Japan by improving convenience of transport means, in response to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games and afterward. In addition, to ease overseas & domestic access to rich tourism assets to raise the value of these assets, and make transport itself into a tourism asset.
• To expand transport infrastructure & services worldwide using Japanese technology and know-how: To contribute to transport problem solving in various locations in the world as well as promoting economic growth and the transport industry of Japan through cutting edge transport technology & know-how.
Finally, to create a foundation of sustainable, secure and safe transport, which aims to:
• To take the most prudent course for large-scale disasters & deterioration of transport facilities: To implement the great natural disaster response plan for Tokyo or Nankai earthquake, etc. based on experience from the Great East Earthquake. Secure sustainable transport services with measures for aging vehicles and infrastructure.
• To enhance transport business foundation for stable & safe operation: Learning from Kan-etsu Highway tour bus accident (2012), JR Hokkaido issue (2013） and Korean ferryboat accident (2014), check service quality, enhance business base, and build good management ethics.
• To secure and foster human resources in the transport sector: To secure, train and develop workforce by encouraging women to join in order to counter labor shortages and decline in technical skills in the transport sector. To ensure the environment for transport network with quality service and create local jobs.
• To proceed with further low carbonization & energy conservation: As 20% of Japan’s CO2 emissions are from transport, improve transport energy conservation toward the low-carbon society, in view of the vulnerability of Japan's energy supply after the Great East Earthquake. Also to work for responses to air pollution, noise and a balanced ecosystem.
Although the basic plan of Japan has action program to promote tourism, it is hard to estimate how much in term of time and cost changes due to the limitation of the detailed information. This section tends to propose some typical scenarios of change the
transportation cost as the results of transportation cost deregulation, then simply inject into the CGE framework to illustrate how transportation cost impacts on tourism industry in macroeconomic view point. The selection of transportation policy scenario is shown in the red frame of Figure 6-13.
Figure 6-13. Selection of scenario for policy analysis
6.3.2 Scenario design for analysis
As mentioned in previous sections, each tourist has to pay two kinds of costs: the first cost is for the tourism services and commodities, such as food, beverage, accommodation, and recreational services…etc. This cost is directly related to the freight transportation.
The second cost is direct money the tourists pay for the transportation services to take them from their origins to tourism destinations, or between and/or within tourism destinations. This second cost is dependent on the passenger transportation. Each transportation type (passenger or freight) includes four typical transportation modes: air, road, water, and rail transportation.
The deregulation of transportation cost is imposed for each type of transportation mode to illustrate its impacts on tourism in term of gross output, demand, welfare,…Each
scenario presents the change of transportation cost of both freight and passenger of corresponding transportation modes, for instance, Scenario 1 illustrates for the change of air transportation cost; Scenario 2 is for the change of road transportation cost; Scenario 3 is for the change of waterway transportation cost; Scenario 4 is for the change of railway transportation cost; and Scenario 5 describes the case that all transportation sectors can reduce their cost (see Figure 6-14).
Figure 6-14. Scenario design for transportation policy analysis
For tourism, if we assume that each tourist spends amount of money in average for their needs of services and commodities. The increase of tourism arrivals may then stimulate some expenditure in tourism services and commodities. In this scene, the change in passenger transportation cost impacts not only on number of tourism arrivals but also on the spending in tourism services and commodities. In other word, the tourism commodities and services demand are effected by both freight transportation margin and passenger transportation cost through the changes of tourism arrivals.
6.3.3 Transportation modal share of tourism
Transportation modal share used for transportation - tourism analysis should include freight and passenger transportation. Freight transportation effects on commodities’
prices of both non-tourism and tourism industries. Passenger transportation also effects on non-tourism travel, for example, daily commuting to school, to work, and tourism travel. Since daily commuting (to work and/or school) demand does not change much upon on the changes of transportation cost (reduction), this study assumes that the
Domestic
Outbound
Inbound Commodities/
Services Travelling (No.
of tourists) (Time/money)
Commodities/
Services Travelling (No.
of tourists) (Time/money)
Commodities/
Services Travelling (No.
of tourists) (Time/money)
Cost Tourism
categories
Freight
Passenger Transport
modes
Air
Road
Water
Rail
S1: -20%
S2: -20%
S3: -20%
S4: -20%
S5: -20% all transport modes
changes in transportation cost may not affect (much) to the demand of daily commuting but only effects to the travel demand in tourism.
From this scene, the freight transportation modal share is obtained to represent the general share of both non-tourism and tourism industries. Passenger transportation modal shares focus on tourism only and distinguished in three tourism categories, namely air, road, water, and rail transportation (Table 6-3).
Table 6-3. Transportation modal share for freight and tourism passenger
Air Road Waterway Railway
Freight1 0.02% 91.80% 7.37% 0.81%
Passenger
Dom Tour2 5.21% 63.54% 1.89% 29.36%
Out Tour3 95.73% - 4.27% -
In Tour3 95.67% - 4.33% -
Note:
1: Traffic policy white paper, MLIT, 2016 (based on the quantity of good)
2: Domestic tourism consumption trend survey, MLIT, 2011 (based on the number of travelers)
3: Domestic/foreign tourism consumption trend survey, MLIT, 2011 (based on the number of travelers)
Freight transportation modal share is in transport quantity term (ton), extracted from Transportation Policy White Book (MLIT, 2016, Table 1-19, P14). For passenger transportation, the modal shares are dependent on the type of tourism. Domestic tourists may include residents who use local transportation modes for their traveling and travelers from other regions who use both inter-regional and local transportation modes for their mobilities. The total consumption of domestic tourism depends on resident tourists and inter-regional tourists. Then the passenger modal share of domestic tourism should represent for both local and inter-regional transportation modes. For this reason, passenger transportation modal share is extracted from tourism consumption trend survey based on the number of travelers use each type of transportation modes in general.
Different to domestic tourists, inbound and outbound tourists utilize international transportation modes (air and water) to move from origins to destination countries, then utilize local transportation at destination for their purposes. During the trip at the destinations, tourists may purchase some services and commodities for their uses. In this situation, if we assume that each tourist spends a specific amount in average for the services and commodities, then the total consumption of these types of tourisms depends
on the number of arrivals to the destinations, which are effected by international transportation. For inbound and outbound tourism, international transportation modal shares will be used as input for the analysis. The modal share information of outbound tourism is extracted from tourism consumption trend survey based on the proportion of number of person utilized the longest transportation modes in their travels. For inbound tourism, passenger transportation modal share is resulted from the aggregation of foreign tourism consumption trend survey with cruise ship statistic. The results are consistency for calendar year 2011.
6.4 Analytical framework and treatment of transportation cost changes in