[Special Feature: Mobility in a Depopulating Society] The Current State of Japanese Bus Policy / Kazushige Terada

Japan is a country where railroads are convenient, but there are many settlements that railroads cannot cover and destinations far from stations. Buses cover such areas nationwide with approximately 40,000 routes (a concept of subdivided lines). On the other hand, as seen in the climactic scenes of TV travel programs about transferring between local buses that keep viewers on the edge of their seats, there are increasing cases where bus routes are completely cut off at municipal or prefectural borders, or where the number of services has become extremely low in the suburbs of large cities.

In this article, regarding Japanese buses, which are becoming increasingly important in an aging society, I will point out that the schemes for community buses and demand-responsive transport, which are becoming widespread, are not panaceas. Furthermore, I will state my personal views on policy issues surrounding buses, such as the effects of deregulation, the nature of subsidies, and labor issues for drivers.

The annual number of users of shared-ride buses in Japan reached a peak of 10.1 billion in fiscal 1970 and then declined, falling to 4.3 billion in fiscal 2016. However, the pace of decline has slowed since 2000, partly due to an increase in the proportion of people who cannot drive their own cars because of aging. Currently, the number of passengers is increasing slightly in urban areas, and the number of users in rural areas has stopped falling.

Since around 2000, many municipalities have established meetings to discuss local bus issues with representatives of residents. These often remained formal discussions lacking substance, focusing on whether to approve the abolition of bus routes or to postpone it. However, from 2007 to the present, the national government has gradually implemented institutional reforms to strengthen the authority of these meetings. There have been an increasing number of cases where people are seriously considering the state of buses over a span of about 10 years in light of the future state of the region.

Centering on regional core cities, serious efforts have also begun on public transportation network plans to support the creation of "compact cities" with low environmental impact. The trunk bus plan in Gifu City and the plan centered on LRT (Light Rail Transit: streetcars with excellent boarding and alighting performance) in Toyama City are attracting attention as good examples.

As population decline progresses not only in mountainous areas but also in regional cities and the suburbs of large cities, community buses and demand-responsive transport are being operated in places where large bus services cannot be maintained due to a decrease in users. Of the 1,741 municipalities nationwide, 1,281 run community buses and 516 run demand-responsive transport (2016).

Community buses have no relation to the vehicles of the same name in the UK; it is a Japanese-coined English term. It refers to buses operated primarily by municipalities, without relying on national subsidies, in a form separate from formal public transportation (such as the Yokohama City Bus). They increased rapidly due to the implementation of financial measures where 80% of expenditures are covered by local allocation taxes.

Many people believe that the "Moo-Bus" in Musashino City, Tokyo, which started in 1995, is the origin of these community buses, and it is true that Musashino City was the first to use that name. However, in terms of buses with functions and route characteristics that would later be called community buses, the "City Loop Bus" (now MM Shuttle) in Musashimurayama City, Tokyo, which started in 1980, is the root, and the first service to gain a significant number of users was the "Mini Bus" in Hino City, Tokyo, which started in 1986. One month before the start of the Moo-Bus, the "Pony-go" service in Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture, which looked very similar to the Moo-Bus except for the fare structure, was put into operation.

Community buses also brought innovations that broke the common sense of conventional bus services. For example, by setting low fares while eliminating complex discounts, there is room to increase usage without significantly reducing revenue per passenger. Also, even in Japan where transportation behavior on weekdays does not have much of a day-of-the-week cycle, there is a possibility that specific-day operations such as "Monday only" will be accepted by residents.

On the other hand, the negative effects of municipalities deciding on service content have also been exposed. For example, even if there is a shopping district in a neighboring city that residents want to visit, the bus does not go there; it stops at settlements within the municipality even if there is almost no usage; or it takes a considerable detour to the essential destination to stop at public facilities that most residents have little business with.

However, as a considerable amount of time has passed since the start of operations, progress is being made in operating wide-area networks in cooperation with neighboring municipalities and in devising fares and timetables so that residents can use them without distinguishing them from general buses. Although not limited to community buses, it is also noteworthy that since about 10 years ago, municipalities have begun to pay attention to the importance of commuting for young people who will bear the future of the region, especially high school students, in addition to the elderly. There are cases where buses are maintained only during school hours, buses are operated to eliminate the need for high school students to live in boarding houses, and fare subsidies have begun.

Demand-responsive transport is a shared-ride service using small buses or sedan-type vehicles that operates without fixed routes or timetables. It is attracting attention as a trump card for securing the last means of transportation in areas where other public transportation cannot be maintained.

In the past, it seems that buses sometimes changed routes according to customer requests at the driver's discretion, but in terms of doing so systematically, the Hankyu Bus "Nose Demand Bus," which started in Nose Town, Osaka Prefecture in 1973 using simple communication technology, was the first. Since 2000, electronics manufacturers and telecommunications operators have competed to supply operation support systems, and operation close to a full-demand type was realized with the "Nakamura Machi Bus" in Shimanto City, Kochi Prefecture. Furthermore, the "Odaka e-machi Taxi" in Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, attracted attention as a system utilizing IT technology and became the trigger for nationwide spread.

Demand-responsive transport has a wide range of operation forms, from services close to ordinary shared-ride buses to services close to taxis. Those close to buses are called semi-demand types, and those close to taxis are called full-demand types.

In the spectrum of operation forms, as the route form and reservation deadline are brought closer to those of a taxi, the operation cost per passenger increases sharply at some point. I have advised municipalities working on the introduction of demand-responsive transport to choose a system just before the operation cost surges. However, municipalities tend to restrict route forms too much, while on the other hand, they try to bring the deadline for users to make reservations too close to the time of boarding. As a result, there are many cases of failure where they over-invest in IT systems and become unable to maintain them financially.

Whether demand-responsive transport can be operated cost-effectively depends on whether users can be successfully combined into a single vehicle by adjusting time and routes. Looking nationwide, cases that have secured usage of several or more people per trip are limited to a handful, such as Iida City in Nagano Prefecture, Kikuchi City in Kumamoto Prefecture, and Togo Town in Hyuga City, Miyazaki Prefecture. Common characteristics of the few good examples include responding to trip chains such as "Home → Hospital → Shopping → Home" rather than a simple pick-up and drop-off concept even in depopulated areas, the municipality identifying a compromise between full-demand and semi-demand that suits the region, and collecting a certain amount of fare necessary for business continuity.

However, even in the aforementioned good examples, there is a harsh reality that the cost-recovery ratio remains at about 30%. Nationwide, the subsidy per user exceeds several thousand yen, and there are many cases where providing fare subsidies for general taxis would be better in terms of both convenience and finance.

One problem hindering the success of demand-responsive transport is users' resistance to the act of making a reservation. It is understandable that the elderly feel pressure regarding this.

Recently, attention has been focused on the concept of MaaS (Mobility as a Service), which integrates multiple transportation modes and facility uses into easy-to-use smartphone reservations. If one-stop reservations covering trip chains can be made, resistance to the reservation itself might be reduced. Furthermore, if there are advancements such as reliable connections with railroads and trunk buses when a reservation is made, one-stop integration where a hospital appointment automatically reserves demand-responsive transport, and automatic arrangement of return trips if a medical examination is delayed, it will lead to a re-evaluation of demand-responsive transport.

For Japanese buses, deregulation took place in 2000 for chartered buses and in 2002 for shared-ride buses. Although there is much rhetoric suggesting that this accelerated route abolitions, the reality is different. Although the legal framework changed—from a licensing system to a permission system for starting services (with routes and timetables requiring business plan approval), and from an approval system to a maximum fare approval system (with fare reductions requiring notification)—the ease of entry and service changes has hardly changed unless it leads to administrative litigation. The actual growth rate in the number of operators was larger in the five years immediately preceding deregulation than in the five years following it for chartered buses (buses for group tours, corporate, and school pick-ups). As for shared-ride buses, new entries have been extremely few even after deregulation. Two years ago, competition between a new entrant and an existing operator on one route in Okayama City became an issue, but such cases are rare except for the period immediately following deregulation.

Regarding trends in route abolition, it is difficult to judge the impact of deregulation because accurate statistics such as the coverage rate of settlements by bus routes are not taken regularly. Comparing the distance of route abolitions immediately before and after deregulation, route abolitions have decreased after deregulation. From quantitative information, it can be said that deregulation delayed the decline of buses to some extent. I speculate that the reason it is often not perceived that way is because municipalities have begun to listen to residents' intentions and reorganize buses based on regional transportation plans, which has increased the frequency with which abolition issues are covered in the media and elsewhere.

When talking about maintaining public transportation, not just buses, opinions are heard that only Japan operates on a self-supporting basis and that this is due to the negligence of the Japanese government. This is half-wrong as far as local buses are concerned. The first misunderstanding is that people often ignore the existence of various so-called hidden subsidies, such as the reduction or exemption of the diesel fuel tax and the practice of recording compensation for "Silver Passes" distributed by municipalities to the elderly as fare revenue. The second is that while overseas, subsidy rates are higher in urban areas than in rural areas, Japan is completely the opposite, and people often compare only urban areas at home and abroad.

The so-called farebox ratio of Japanese shared-ride buses, which is the ratio of fare revenue to operation costs, is about 80%. The remainder depends on government subsidies. This farebox ratio is considerably higher than in Southern Europe or North America, but when I investigated previously, it was at the same level as rural areas in both the UK and Finland.

Regarding subsidies, people tend to look only at the level, but the method of delivery is also important. Japan places emphasis on following formalities even for policies concerning lifelines like buses. In other words, the external forms such as the route shape and usage rate of the buses eligible for subsidies are decided, and national subsidies in particular strictly stipulate these. Therefore, even if one tries to make improvements such as running direct services to the main gate of a high school only for morning trips or making a detour to the hospital entrance only in the morning, the usage rate of the remaining trips may become low, making it impossible to receive subsidies.

There are many cases where morning outbound and afternoon inbound trips are operated as deadhead runs without passengers to increase the apparent occupancy rate and receive subsidies. It is true that there may be few users on morning outbound and afternoon inbound trips. However, it is not as if there is no transportation demand from healthy elderly people who have moved to town but want to go see their vacant homes or fields.

The policy of subsidies for buses has been refined since the 1970s while expanding the scope of decentralization. It could be said that it was a testing ground for financial decentralization.

Until fiscal 2000, buses were maintained through coordinated subsidies from the three tiers of government: national, prefectural, and municipal. From fiscal 2001, it was decided that depending on the route form, the national government would primarily bear the subsidy responsibility for trunk lines, and municipalities for branch lines. Prefectures often support services in areas that fall outside national policy. However, the relationship between the three tiers of government has not become a complementary one. The fact that routes do not connect at municipal or prefectural borders, which is frequently shown on the TV program about local bus travel mentioned at the beginning, can be said to be one manifestation of this problem.

Due to the 2018 law for promoting work-style reform and its supplementary resolutions (especially those of the House of Representatives), it has been decided to shorten the working hours of drivers of buses and other vehicles starting from 2024. Currently, work has begun in a specialized committee of the Labor Policy Council on a comprehensive revision of the "Notice on Standards for Improvement," which sets out detailed driving hours and other conditions for drivers.

A particular issue in this regard is the interval between the previous day's work and the next day's work. Under current regulations, this can be shortened to 8 hours. If a long lunch break is taken, it is possible to work from the first bus to the last bus. At the committee meetings, opinions have been expressed that the interval should be extended, and discussions are continuing.

Although it is not known what the conclusion will be at this point, after 2024, it may become difficult to operate all routes in the same way from morning to night, or to operate on Saturdays and Sundays at the same level as weekday daytime. On the other hand, there is a possibility that working conditions for drivers will improve and the driver shortage will move toward a resolution. While it seems unavoidable that the number of services themselves will be reduced somewhat, the adoption of labor and driving time regulations that are easy to follow, along with the creation of nationwide standards for operation patterns and timetables, might cover that downside.

The quality of Japan's bus network and its operational efficiency can be said to be at a level that can be boasted internationally, at least regarding local buses. As an important means of transportation for residents nationwide that supports an aging society, I hope that new bus services will be born without relying solely on demand-responsive transport.