- Problems within the participating cities

Here is the list of problems from the three participating cities.

Bangkok: The world's worst traffic jams due to its rapid industrialization and population concentration. The city is constructing suspension railways and subways, but these efforts are not enough considering the population increase.

Jakarta: An emergency issue is to mitigate heavy traffic due to rapid economic growth and expansion. The city needs more exclusive bus lanes and better connections between highways and bus routes.

Taipei: Although both the bus and the underground transportation systems are already in place as the cornerstone of public transportation, the rapid growth in motorcycles has become an issue. Its future focus is on ITS development and financial arrangement under the cooperation of the public and private sectors. There is a rising level of interest in introducing friendlier facilities and vehicles along with implementing informative signs and doors on train platforms.

Each participating city has several different problems. One of the purposes of this year's program was to share those issues and find possible solutions through discussions among the participants.

- Highlights

The third day of the program was a visit to the site of the Shinjuku south exit redevelopment project.

Shinjuku is one of the biggest terminal stations with the most significant number of incoming and outgoing passengers in Japan, and it houses many commercial businesses. When the time came to redevelop its south exit area, it had several transportation planning issues. The concerns were chronic traffic concentration and gridlock due to inadequate infrastructure in front of the station, inconvenience caused by scattered locations of express highway bus stops and relating facilities, and safety issues due to the aging of the National Highway Route 20's bridge over the railway.

The redevelopment project in the Shinjuku south exit area is now underway in line with a renewal of the bridges of Route 20 in order to solve these problems.

When the project completes in around, 2015, the route will widen, allowing the vehicles to move easier and creating a safer area for pedestrians. The connections among different means of traffic will strengthen as the area in front of the station begins to function better. The area will become a multi-layered traffic terminal with vehicles and trains on different floors: the station facilities and pedestrian plaza on the second floor, a taxi stand and car parking on the third floor, and facilities for a highway express bus platform on the fourth floor.

A multi-layered traffic terminal is unusual for Asia, so the participants asked several questions about how it allocates floors for buses, taxis, cars, and how often the buses leave and arrive. There were also questions about financial arrangements, such as how it distributes maintenance costs and fees among multiple public and private operators of the facility. The visit and discussions were fruitful.

Despite the four-day program ending quickly, participants from the three cities were actively engaged. The participants also noted "we learned a lot of meaningful measures from the program, proving the training was highly satisfactory." For their further understanding, some requested reference materials from other construction projects. These opinions will be incorporated in the training programs for the next year. We look forward to seeing you all at the next program.