Superiority of international city “Tokyo” (3) Tokyo-Yokohama Megalopolis ranked #1 in “population of urban area”
In this post, I would like to examine the “urban area population” and the transportation system.
Regarding the urban area population of the world, the definition of urban areas differs from country to country:
- Urban area: artificial structures · residential areas and urbanized areas where population density is continuous; • Metropolitan area: an economic zone represented by commuting / school area and employment area These two types of areas are statistically distinguished.
In the National Census of Japan, the former is defined as a densely inhabited district with a population density of 4,000 people / sq. km or more, and the latter is recognized as a metropolitan area in which 1.5% of the population are commuting to the center city.
In “Demographia World Urban Area 2017 edition”, Wendell Cox, a visiting professor at USC, describes that there are 37 metropolitan areas with a population of 10 million or more in the world, the ranking of which is shown in the graph below.
Population of Tokyo-Yokohama Metropolitan Area is 37.9 million people and is ranked # 1 in the world. Other Japanese areas such as Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto is ranked 14th and the Nagoya metropolitan area is ranked 37th. From China, there are six city areas including Shanghai and Beijing, from India, Delhi, Mumbai and five other cities are ranked in. 24 out of the top 37 are Asian urban areas.
We can find cities well known for heavy traffic jams such as Jakarta, Mumbai, and Beijing in the ranking and it reminds me of the Chinese Newspapers introducing “Tokyo’s Miracle”. Indeed, the decrease in traffic congestion in Tokyo is outstanding. With such large number of population in the metropolitan area, or in other words commuting area, Tokyo has less traffic jams than Jakarta, Mumbai, and Beijing mainly owing to the fact that 86% of commuters use public transportation such as subways, suburban trains and city buses (according to the Tokyo metropolitan area Person Trip Survey 2013).
Even though the peak-time congestion of trains and subways in Tokyo is tremendously heavy, improvement of public transportation system including the creation of direct operation of suburban trains and subways, and the reformation of the flow of train transferring of passengers are steadily going on. It can be said that the majority of the people do not feel resistant to commuting by public transportation.
According to “Railway Engineering Handbook”, the transportation capacity per hour is 7,200 for private cars, while the railway is 20,000 people. Moreover, these figures are based on a premise that the railway is a full capacity ride and the private car is a four-person ride.
If we recalculate, assuming that the number of passengers of each private car is 1.2 people/unit and the congestion rate of each train is 180%, these figures will turn to be 2,160 people(cars) and 36,000 people(trains), meaning the railway is 16.7 times higher.
We can assume that the size limit for an urban area which only support transportation of private cars will be around 500,000 people. We have to be aware that the successful network of public transportation is what supports the Tokyo-Yokohama Metropolitan Area of 37.9 million people.
