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The Road Council is the adviser to the Japanese Ministry of Construction (MOC) on matters of road policy at the national level. To be more responsive to society’s needs, the council implemented public involvement (PI) activities to solicit people’s opinions about the New 5-Year Road Improvement and Management Program. The council issued a series of reports that provided information to the people and solicited their opinions before it made its final recommendations to MOC. The focus was on the effects that people’s opinions have on the road policies contained in the reports. The relationship between road policies set by the Road Council and MOC and people’s opinions was analyzed. A document-analysis methodology for extracting key words representing policy measures and identifying policy fields was developed. The study assumed that the number of key words indicates the degree of emphasis in the report. Frequency of opinions for each policy field also was determined. Relationships between the number of key words and the frequency of opinions were analyzed using Kendall’s correlation coefficient. Causal relations within each policy field were analyzed. The results clearly established the influence of people’s opinions on the resulting road policies. The findings also showed two kinds of changes in the documents: ( a) changes initiated by people’s opinions and ( b) changes initiated by the Road Council. So far, PI activities have been applied only at the national planning level. These activities also can be applied to other levels and aspects of planning.

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In this paper, effective PI methods and PI process are considered based on the experiences and the events of the Ushiku City Master Plan Development Process. We conducted questionnaire and interview surveys to various interested parties and to comprehensively analyze these data in order to examine the characteristics of various PI activities and PI methods. We acquired practical knowledge on how to have effective PI, including to have active discussion in the public meetings, to increase participation in PI activities, to improve the quality of the plan, to raise the citizens' concern, to effectively and efficiently manage the PI process.

In fiscal 2003, the Road Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport in Japan performed demonstration projects concerning diverse and flexible charge measures for toll roads. The goals were to promote the effective use of roads by encouraging traffic to switch from general purpose roads to toll roads, improving roadside environments, mitigating congestion, and promoting traffic safety measures. This study analyzes the results of the 22 projects. As a result of the bureau's efforts, traffic on the toll-free general purpose roads decreased and traffic on the toll roads increased, with traffic congestion in the affected areas subsequently eased. The projects that were intended to eliminate commuter congestion in regional cities were in many cases particularly effective. However, this effectiveness varied according to the setting of the toll and the interchange section, the type of vehicles involved, the discount time zone, and the locational relationship between the general road and the toll road.