Government-proposed legislation to postpone by 15 years the time when the nation's expressways become toll-free has come to underline the flaws in the 2005 scheme that privatized Japan Public Highway Corp. and other expressway operators. The government needs to fully explain why the toll-free target year is now being pushed back just nine years after privatization — and whether the idea of making expressways toll-free at any point in the future is feasible.
Under the privatization scheme, expressway operators were to repay roughly ¥40 trillion in debts incurred by past expressway construction within 45 years, then make all of the nation's expressways toll-free. But the latest bill pushes back the deadline for eliminating tolls from 2050 to 2065 — because of the need to borrow more to repair and renovate aging bridges and tunnels.
A December 2012 ceiling collapse inside the Sasago Tunnel on the Chuo Expressway in Yamanashi Prefecture, which killed nine people, highlighted the urgency in renovating those aging expressway infrastructures. Such obvious needs should have been foreseen when the expressway operators were privatized. But the privatization scheme required the operators to use much of their toll revenue (minus routine operational expenses) to repay past debts without a mechanism to set aside renovation funds.