While the construction or extension of expressways is proceeding according to plans in many regions of Japan, road extension work is also under way on the Hanshin Expressway, an urban artery in the Kinki region (western Japan). The Hanshin Expressway, seriously damaged by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in January 1995 and completely reconstructed by September 30, 1996, has been playing an important role as a main transportation route for quake reconstruction work around the city of Kobe. This research is a development of that continued since 1995, which focused on the development of a visual information board which provides the functions of displaying estimated times of arrival and graphic road information in addition to the conventional character information display function. This year's research concentrated on developing a data transmission system to optimize operation of this new type information board, or visual variable signboard, as discussed in the previous report.
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