| Author | Mohibullah, Md |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.TE-26-05 |
| Subject(s) | High speed trains--Japan--Tohoku Region (Japan)
Transportation--Japan--Case studies
|
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Transportation Engineering |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | This thesis evaluates how the extension of high-speed rail (HSR) into a geographically peripheral corridor reshapes regional accessibility, using Japan’s Tohoku Shinkansen as a natural policy experiment. The 2010 Hachinohe–Shin-Aomori extension is treated as a quasi experimental intervention and assessed through a multi-indicator accessibility framework comprising service population (SP), number of reachable zones (R), four-hour coverage percentage (CP), and average travel time (ATT). A three-period difference-in-differences (DID) design, estimated on a 27-zone panel constructed from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) Interregional Travel Survey for 2005, 2010, and 2015, isolates the causal accessibility effect of the extension, while a present-day (2026) multimodal cross-section assembled from public-transport and road travel-time data diagnoses the gap between station-based and first and last-mile accessibility. The results reveal a pattern of mass connectivity without network integration. The extension produced a large, statistically significant service-population gain at the directly treated zone (Aomori) but no measurable diffusion of accessibility benefits beyond it: DID effects are systematically insignificant across four distance buffers and three time-access bands. Geographic centrality is essentially uncorrelated with time-based accessibility (r ≈ −0.01), confirming that the network is highly selective. The 2026 diagnostic shows that first and last mile accessibility is constrained less by trunk-line infrastructure than by feeder connections: mean intermodal connection time is 26.4 minutes against a Japanese best-practice benchmark of 6–15 minutes, and the private car remains the fastest mode on the majority of non-HSR origin–destination pairs. The thesis concludes that the next frontier of accessibility improvement in peripheral Japanese corridors lies in intermodal feeder integration, timetable coordination, coordinated feeder bus services, and demand-responsive transport. And it recommends measurable origin–destination accessibility benchmarks aligned with Japan’s Third National Spatial Strategy. |
| Year | 2026 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering (2026) |
| Department | Other Field of Studies (No Department) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Transportation Engineering (TRE) |
| Chairperson(s) | Bhatt, Ayushman |
| Examination Committee(s) | Kato, Hironori;Sano, Kazushi;Kunnawee Kanitpong |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | HM Kings, Royal Thai Government Scholarship |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2026 |
