A Study of Introducing a New Transportation System into a Traditional City, Kanazawa

Kanazawa City has a population of about 450,000 and is one of the most famous castle cities in Japan. The features of the city's structure are insufficient main roads and many narrow roads, which derived from the old castle city. As a result, traffic jams usually occur in the morning and the evening. It is a big problem for Kanazawa people. To solve the problem, Kanazawa City has tried transportation demand management policy since 1970's. Enforcement of exclusive bus lanes is an important example. At the same time, Kanazawa City began to study a new transportation system in 1970. In 1982, automated guided transit was proposed by Kanazawa City. The proposal was not realized. In 1994, it was decided to move the Prefectural government offices from the center of the city to the suburb. This gave some clues to the discussions on a new transportation system. In 1994, the guided bus system was proposed as a new transportation system. The study was continued up to 1997. In 1998, studies on light rail transit, as well as a comparison between guided bus system and light rail transit were carried out. However, the conclusion was unable to be reached. At the same time, several subjects to solve were indicated by the study in 1998. Especially, the transportation problem, which derived from road's spatial insufficiency, was a big problem. Therefore, traffic experiments in central Kanazawa were carried out in October 2000. The main content of the experiments was time extension of exclusive bus lane. Kanazawa City and Ishikawa Prefecture continue their studies with regards to introducing a new transportation system.