Mobility management through communication for new residents.

For development of sustainable transport system, it is essential to modify people's attitude and behavior from overuse of car into use of other sustainable modes. Communicative transportation measures have collected attentions from transportation policy makers and researchers as soft transportation measure to change people's attitudes and car use behavior in EU countries, Australia, USA, and Japan. There are three major locations to implement such communicative measures, i.e., residential area, school, and workplace. Although communicative measures in residential area have been implemented through residential association and by sending materials by mail, the method is likely to be expensive. Two experiments to test effectiveness of communicative mobility management measures targeting new residents wereconducted. An experiment in this study was conducted at Ryugasaki city (population is approximately 80,000), and the other was conducted at Takasaki city (population is approximately 300,000). A questionnaire was handed off to new residents who visit the city hall to submit their moving-in notification and they were asked to fill in a questionnaire. Immediately afterthe questionnaire from the new resident was received, they were given an information pack that includes information kit about the public transport system in the area. The kit included a bus route map, bus timetable, an information sheet about a way to use the local bus system and bus craft postcard as a small gift. Note that some new residents, who were randomly selected, received a bag which did not include an information kit on PT. Six month after the initial questionnaire, a further questionnaire was distributed to new residents in both the experimental and control group. Comparison of the travel behavior between the two groups indicated that frequency of car use with the group given public transport information was significantly less (22.6%) than that of the control group. It was also indicated that frequency of bus use of experimental group was much higher (818.7%) thanthat of control group, and frequency of train use was much higher (231.8%) than that of control group. In the experiment of Takasaki city, comparison of the travel behavior in the experimental and control groups indicatedthat there was no significant difference between journey frequencies in control and experimental groups, but the frequency of bus use of experimental group was approximately triple of that of control group, and the frequency of railway use of experimental group was approximately double of that of control group. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.