○ Accidents and other problems and effects of centralized traffic

(The impact of accidents, transport disorder, and so on in urban transportation facilities)

When railways, airports, and other infrastructure in urban areas with centralized traffic is hit by accidents, transport disorder, and so forth, like the earthquake with epicenter in the Northwestern part of Chiba Prefecture on July 23 $ ^{rd} $ , 2005 and the trouble with power supply facilities that occurred at Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) on August 2 $ ^{nd} $ of the same year, many users of this infrastructure are affected in cases where it takes time to bring operations or navigation back on line.

Additionally, as the functioning of many transportation facilities has now come to rely on information systems, the risk of disruptions in service or degradation of functioning has become high due to intentional causes like cyber attacks, unintentional causes like human error, and even natural disasters like earthquakes. It seems that the socioeconomic impact would be especially high if these kinds of IT disturbances struck the urban transportation facilities that are the hub of the transportation network.

## (The necessity of provisions for railroad crossings in urban areas)

More than 95% of the so-called “un-opening railroad crossings,” where traffic is blocked for 40 minutes or more per hour at peak times, are concentrated in the three major metropolitan areas. Strengthening and quickening of provisions for crossing gates toward eliminating problems like “un-opening railroad crossings” is being sought from the standpoint of preventing accidents at crossing gates and smoothing traffic flow in urban areas where traffic is concentrated.

Proportion of Nationwide “Un-opening Railroad Crossings” Located in the Three Major Metropolitan Areas

Notes: 1. The three major metropolitan areas: Tokyo area (Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, Saitama Prefecture, Chiba Prefecture), Osaka area (Osaka Prefecture, Hyogo Prefecture, Kyoto Prefecture, Nara Prefecture), and Nagoya area (Aichi Prefecture, Gifu Prefecture, Mie Prefecture)

2. Data from the year 2004

Source: MLIT

## ☐ Incidence of settlement isolation

While urban areas have their own unique safety and security issues, non-urban areas also have their own unique issues for their areas.

Settlement isolation has become more common in connection with topographical characteristics, transportation access, and so on when natural disasters occur in the semi-mountainous and coastal areas that make up about 70% of the area of Japan's national land. In settlements isolated by natural disasters, cut off access to neighboring areas causes difficulties in extraction, rescue, relief, and restoration efforts for the whole settlement. Furthermore, in semimountainous areas where there is advanced depopulation and declining birthrate coupled with population aging there is concern over the fact that even with the risk for isolation these settlements face, the local disaster prevention capacity is being degraded due to the aging of the population.

For settlements at risk for isolation by natural disasters it is therefore necessary to make efforts to secure access to other areas in times of disaster, as well as to consider the policy on provisions for when these access routes are disrupted.