Route Selection for a New Transportation System in Hillside Urban Areas: A Case Study in Nagasaki, Japan

Abstract

In hillside urban areas (HUA) gradual change in surrounding topography and inability of road environment to cope with these changes hinders the development of an efficient transportation network. Further, high growth of elderly residents in HUA developed into a big problem. In this study, the writers present a potential solution to this problem by examining the possibility of introducing new traffic means (minimonorail) using geographic information systems, taking the case of a hillside urban area in Nagasaki, Japan. The attribute data included gradient, control point, housing density, and distance from the roads, employed to calculate their relative importance using the analytic hierarchy process. These attribute data were converted into a quantitative score and eight possible routes were initially identified based on the spatial distribution of the total scores. Finally, three routes were selected by considering the average score of each route and the local aging rate.