SELECTION OF BUS TRANSPORTATION ROUTES FOR REVITALIZATION OF DOWNTOWN CITY BY USING GIS

Downtown cities in Japan are facing sharp fall in customers and continued shut down of shops due to decrease of population, increase in family cars and flowing of customers into the suburban large-scale retail stores. Omura City in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan is no exception to this. For the revitalization of the downtown, many actions have been taken to open the vacant shops. However, transportation problem is the most important one to be solved for the citizens including the elderly people having difficulty in movement. Accordingly, this study was aimed at the revitalization of the downtown by substantiality public transportation. We have attempted to develop routes from the view-point of convenience by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). As a result of the study, we were able to select three bus transportation areas by incorporating qualitative factors into the analysis. Finally, the study concluded that, revitalization activities of the downtown city itself is required in addition to re-structuring of bus transportation system for the revitalization of the downtown city.