B09

Research Abstracts on Spatial Information ScienceCSIS DAYS 2016

Mobility for work purpose in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area:
Commuting and behavior patterns
Gaston San Cristobal
Graduate School of Life and Environment Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Email: <gastonsancristobal@gmail.com>(1) Purpose: Every day in the Tokyo Metropolitan
Area millions of inhabitants commute to performtheir working activities, generating a big change inthe distribution of the day and night population.
The purpose of this study is to findpreferences, patterns and behaviors in the mobilityfor work purpose in different urban and sub-urbancores in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

(3) Results: The results reveal that the majority of theworkers are concentrated in two urban cores locatedin the central busiest area of the Metropolitan Area:
Minato and Chiyoda; and Shinjuku and Nakano.
In these areas, about half of the workers commute
from areas outside these cores and the train is themost used mode of transportation. There are also
other urban cores with high density of commuters
outside the central busiest area, where the behavior
patterns are different in comparison with the centralcores. Despite the train public service still being themost chosen mode of transportation by thecommuters outside the central cores, they alsochoose other modes of transportation to move totheir work facilities (e.g. car and bicycle). In
addition, in the outer urban cores, the majority ofcommuters live closer to the epicenter. People withno walking access to a train station in the centralcores, still have a considerable preference to thetrain service. In contrast, on the outer urban cores,
the limitation of access to a train station affects
more the decision of using other mode oftransportation. Furthermore, the distribution ofrailroad train stations seems to be more related withthe busiest work areas than the busiest household’sareas.

(2) Data and methods: Person Trip Data (PTD) wasused to obtain the mobility data of the inhabitants.
This study considered the 2008 data sample of theTokyo Metropolitan Area. ArcGIS® software
package version 10.2 was used to process andanalyze the data.
A characterization of the population sample
was performed to detect all the commuters for work
purpose. First, a fishnet was created dividing thestudy area in polygons of one square kilometer. Thedensity of the commuters’ inhabitants in eachpolygon was then calculated to create commuters’density maps in different time shifts (Figure 1).
Consequently, time-space movement maps
were created to visualize the motion of the sample.
Day and night population were detected in order tounderstand where the households and working
facilities are located.
The busiest density cores where people
commute and other sub urban cores outside thebusiest urban area were also detected to analyze themobility behavior patterns of the inhabitants who
commute to each core. For each core, an
Origin-Destination (OD) Matrix was created tovisualize the results and perform different
characterization analyses (Figure 2).

Figure 2: OD Matrix results(4) Future plan: For a more comprehensive
understanding of the commuting behavior in thestudy area, I plan to include the distance factor witha radial perimeter for a better visual scope of thecommuting activity on each core, and also, identify
the stages of mobility from households to work
facilities(5) Acknowledgement: This work is supported byCenter for Spatial Information Science (CSIS), theUniversity of Tokyo (Joint Research No. 53

Figure 1: Commuter’s Density Maps- 26 -