Final Report March 2000
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- Percentage of Urban Population in APEC Region
- Urban Primacy in Selected APEC Countries
- Economy Prime City Second City Primacy Ratio
- Population Trends in Selected Cities in APEC Region
- 2.2 Urban Development and Transportation 2.2.1 Urban Development and Transportation in Highly Urbanized Countries
- Comparisons of Annual Transport Performance: Canada, Europe, Japan and USA
- Country Population (mil) Pass-Km (bil)
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Source: IMF, International Financial Statistics, 1999 Urban transport problems, however, exist regardless of the urbanization level. Highly urbanized countries have problems such as excessive auto-dependence and resulting increase in the use of fossil fuel, traffic congestion, excessive maintenance needs for transportation facilities. Countries under rapid urbanization are facing poor management of urban development and transportation facilities, rapid increase in automobiles, serious traffic congestion, unbalance between travel demand and transport facilities, decreasing share and deteriorating service quality of public transport system. Countries such as China, Indonesia and Thailand are the examples in which only some metropolitan cities have grown rapidly despite of overall low urbanization rate. In the case of Thailand, although its national urbanization rate is merely 21.6%, Bangkok, the capital of the country, is a metropolitan city with a population of more than 8 millions and it is expected to have a population of more than 10 millions in early 2000s. In China, of which national urbanization rate is about 34%, Beijing and Tianjin, with Shanghai which was developed as an international city long years ago, have grown with a population of 10 millions, and some other cities are expected to be grown into large cities continuously. Like other developing ones, developing countries in the APEC region are encountering the phenomena in which only one or two cities are developed into huge cities while other most cities relatively lack development. Main reason for such phenomena can be attributed to the concentration of political activities and a significant gap in the level of culture and education. Unit: 1,000 inhabitants Sources: Various The APEC member economies can be divided into some groups in terms of urban development and transport system. Australia, Canada, Japan, NZ and USA have achieved a high level of urbanization, reaching almost 0.5 of auto-ownership per person. The transport infrastructure, such as roads and urban railways, almost meets the basic travel demand and maintains the balance between demand and supply. In the case of Australia, Canada and USA, however, due to the development of less densely populated cities, an automobile-oriented urban transport system is criticized to be unsuitable for non-motorized modes such as walking, bicycles3. Despite of well-organized transit system, modal share of the public transport system is actually low. Expenditures on roads are used mainly for the maintenance of the existing facilities, and not for the construction of new roads. Exceptionally, Japan has a relatively low dependence on automobiles. For example, in Tokyo Transit Area, for the modal shares of passenger transport, 55.6% of the passengers depend on railways, 8.6% on bus, and 32.1% on automobiles. It was reported that in main railway service areas in Tokyo an average congestion rate was 194%. Along with congestion problem, it was also reported that the time wasted for commuting and attending school was other serious social problem. In 1994, for example, a survey indicates that commuting in the Tokyo Urban Region requires 68 minutes on an average, and 22% of commuters required over 90 minutes4. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
