## (2) Developing transport nodes

Transport nodes, such as railway stations and bus terminals, hold a high degree of convenience and potentials as a core of urban reconstruction, because they attract numerous people to use the various kinds of transport facilities that converge on them.

The MLIT leverages the implementation of transport node improvement projects, urban and regional transport strategy promotion projects, General Improvement of Railway Stations

Example of a Transport Node Improvement Project (Shinjuku Station South Exit)

and so on at the transport nodes, such as the Shinjuku St. South Exit District, and in the surrounding areas to improve the ease with which passengers transfer from one means of transport to another, to consolidate the urban areas disrupted by railways, etc., to improve the station functions and so on and thus to streamline urban traffic and build up the functions of these transport nodes.

Further, the MLIT subsidizes the implementation of the Station-Town Partnership Project in progress in the Sannomiya Station Front South District (Kobe City), a projects based on a comprehensive plan formulated by a conference composed of local governments, railway operators and so on to keep the progress moving efficiently. The project, coupled with a station facility use facilitation project for Hansin Sannomiya Station, aims to renovate the station area in an integrated fashion.

The MLIT also encourages upgrading of the station facilities as a general core of safe and comfortable regional living, as by building child-support and medical facilities in the premises of existing railway stations, from viewpoints of regional concentration by bringing medicine, work and living into closer vicinities.

## (3) Wide-area development of infrastructures to induce firm location

Competition, collaboration and regional buoyancy in East Asia should benefit greatly by inviting and accumulating internationally competitive growing industries in the individual regions. Motivated by this recognition, measures have been promoted to support expanding regional employment and more buoyant economy by concentrating investment on the development of those infrastructures that are truly needed to carry out unique regional approaches, such as developing airports, ports and harbors, railways and wide-area expressway networks.

## ① Enhanced airport facilities

Air networks that interconnect remote locations at home and abroad are greatly instrumental in revitalizing regions by promoting regional tourism and corporate economic activities. Especially, as the economy goes on global in recent years in the context of a growing division of international labor, air transport assumes increasing importance for its speediness. In line with this trend, efforts to enhance airport facilities by improving terminal areas, such as aprons, are in progress.

## ② Port and harbor development

In an increasingly tight global climate for resources, energies and so on, Japan finds it urgently imperative to realize more stable, less costly imports because the nation depends on imports for virtually all of its requirements for these. The MLIT is committed to reinforcing the nation’s industrial competitiveness, creating more employment and curbing the outward flow of revenues by realizing stable, less costly imports through the development of core port and harbor facilities to accommodate larger vessels and formation of efficient national marine transport networks through accelerated business-to-business partnerships.

## ③ Railway development

The nationwide network of trunk railways is the lifeblood of passenger and freight transport, accelerating interaction between blocks and between regions, encouraging industrial location and activating regional economies to energize regional living. Rail freight transport, in particular, plays a dominant role in moving industrial commodities, etc. that