ITS Japan News: GOTO, the Islands of EVITS

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:34:05 +0200

New Sightseeing Tourism focused on EV and ITS technologies

ITS Japan is supporting the ITS activities in the various local areas in Japan to promote ITS for practical use. One of the important ITS projects is to attract tourists with effective and useful EV and ITS technologies in the Goto Islands, Nagasaki prefecture in the Kyusyu districts.

The highlight is the heritage of churches and their related relics. Goto city and Nagasaki prefecture are doing their utmost to preserve the beautiful panorama of the sea and archipelagos surrounding those heritages. They are working to register these assets as a UNESCO "World Heritage" site, and to also promote new tourism using EV with ITS technologies.

The project is to provide tourists with public transport information, optimal sightseeing route guidance, and quick charging station guidance via DSRC infrastructure. The project will further improve convenience by connecting public transportation with electric powered rent-a-cars and taxis, and by deploying photovoltaic power generation systems in addition to quick charging stations. The DSRC systems will also enable the automatic collection of charging and parking fees.

The city and prefecture have already installed 100 EVs and PHVs earlier in 2010. In July 2010, the demonstration parade of the 100 EVs and PHVs on the island was overwhelming, and was officially recognised as a Guinness World Record.

An additional 100 EVs and PHVs are planned for 2011.

The project is promoted by the "Nagasaki EV & ITS" consortium. This consortium was established in October 2009, consisting of 140 members from ministries, local governments, academia, related associations and manufacturers of automobile, infrastructure and car-navigation.

At the 17^th ITS World Congress Busan 2010, you can witness the project in a congress tour "PT4 Fukuoka & Nagasaki, Japan" joins and Special Session 18 "GOTO EV & ITS island Driving Tours of the Future", as well as at the exhibition stand. During the congress tour, PT4 combines a technical visit to Fukuoka prefecture (neighboring to Nagasaki Prefecture) with a Smart IC (interchange for the exclusive use of ETC) and Park & Ride system.

This article has been brought to you as part of the cooperation between ERTICO and ITS Japan.

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ITS Japan News: GOTO, the Islands of EVITS