In Japan, a small country where over 120 million people live and more than 70 million vehicles travel each day, about one million people are killed or injured in traffic accidents each year. In addition, congestion in various parts of the country due to the increase in vehicle traffic causes a time loss of 5.3 billion hours annually, which corresponds to an economic loss of JPY 12 trillion. Construction of a sufficient road network to accommodate such a large volume of traffic, however, is difficult, because of the geographical restrictions such as the narrow land area and steep terrain and social restrictions such as excessively concentrated land use. Therefore it is necessary to effectively use road resources to resolve these problems. Furthermore, Japan is expected to become an unprecedented ageing society where the elderly population increases while total population and productive-age population fall. By 2020, the elderly aged 65 years and older will account for 25 percent of the population. An environment that supports greater mobility for the elderly and serves as a foundation for vibrant societies thus needs to be established. ITS, which combines humans, roads, and vehicles using state-of-the-art IT technologies, is not only an effective means to resolve these problems but is also an infrastructure which will help revolutionise industry and society in the 21st century. Developing and providing high-quality social services related to road traffic, in parallel with the rapid IT revolution, enriches people's life and improves safety on roads. In Japan, ITS is already being deployed in some areas and has been proven to yield such effects. The number of vehicles fitted with car navigation units incorporating VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System) receivers, which provides vehicles with realtime road information, now exceeds 2 million. Furthermore, the experimental operation of the ETC (Electronic Toll Collection system), which is an unprecedented system in that it can be used on numerous toll roads operated by different administrative bodies and has high-security against illegal use and privacy intrusion, started from April this year, and about 600 toll gates in the country will be fitted with ETC equipment by the end of FY2000. Deployment of ITS capable of solving problems peculiar to regional communities has also started in several areas of the country, providing benefits to many people. With respect to Smart Cruise Systems, which will greatly improve road traffic safety and improve mobility for elderly drivers, proving tests called Demo 2000 have been carried out from October this year at test driving course in the Public Works Research Institute of the Ministry of Construction, in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, with the participation of private companies, universities, and researchers from Japan and abroad. Based on the results of the proving tests and the above-mentioned experimental operation, Smartway, which will serve as an open platform for integrating ITS applications systems, will be introduced in several areas from 2003. We will continue to make efforts to introduce ITS while placing emphasis on international collaboration such as the ITS World Congress and workshops with other countries so that ITS will evolve as a universal system which can meet a variety of users' needs. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting