Driving in expressway

The Japanese expressways or super highways in an American expression are notorious for the highly expensive tolls. Before expounding the exposure of risks in the expressways as an experienced expert, I have to categorize two ways explicitly. One is metropolitan expressways running in big cities. The other is trunk ones connecting between big cities.

As for the metropolitan expressways in Tokyo the toll is 700 yen(as of 2000). The original fare was cheaper. But the toll has gradually been rising in the name of maintaining the roads although there was a promise that the toll of the metropolitan expressways would become free 30 years later after the completion of all constructions. In reality construction is always under way somewhere. The roads never become freeways.

What is more embarrassing is its overcrowd regardless of paying money. Although we can drive relatively smoothly in weekend, the traffic jams are terrible in weekday. The reason for its overcrowd is simple. There is no good balance between the volume of cars and the capacity of the roads. Namely the dally number of cars on the roads always exceeds the capacity in weekday. Of course the same can be said in the normal roads in Tokyo or Osaka. But once we enter the expressways and get involved in the traffic congestion, we have difficulties in getting out of there soon because it takes time to get even to the next exit.

What are the risks in the metropolitan expressways? In the traffic conditions as I mention above, we have already known the risk of time loss. when you have an appointment in the weekday, it’s better not to use the metropolitan highways. You can’t measure time at all. So what is the most outstanding risk may be collapsing in the event that an big earthquake happens.

Since most of the roads in the metropolitan expressways are elevated, we can often feel the shakings of the structures during we are at a standstill. This is only my over-anxiety. No! Turning the clock back on January 17^th in 1995, when the Great Hanshin Earthquake happened, I think many people witnessed the collapsing structures of the elevated expressways in Kobe like dominos fall. Many drivers died by falling down onto the ground altogether with the cars. The lucky part of the unfortunate was that the earthquake occurred early in the morning. If it had happened just in rush-hour, there would have been much more victims.

Turning to the Tokyo metropolitan expressways, many parts of the structures were built in sixties in order to prepare the infrastructures for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Because nearly 40 years have passed since then, we have to think of driving in the expressways before we wait until all the constructions complete.