Japan Dems retreat further from detoll pledge - only Hokkaido so far

Japan's Democratic Party government will confine any toll removals next financial year to  the sparsely settled northern island of Hokkaido, reducing the cost to a tiny fraction of the Y600b ($6.6b @ Y=1.1c) they previously said they would spend on detolling, Yomiuri Shimbun reports. The leading newspaper cited statements made by the party leader and prime minister Yukio Hatoyama in a closed meeting of lawmakers recently.

The Democrats in Japan have had detolling as a campaign pledge since 2003 as a response to conservative Junichero Koizuki's semi-privatization of the formerly government toll corporations. However the detoll pledge did not figure very prominently in this year's election campaign which brought the Democrats to office Aug 30, and has not resonated with the Japanese public.

Opinion surveys say 65% of Japanese voters oppose abolition of road tolls and only 12% think it should be an issue the Hatoyama government should focus on.

see table nearby

Yomiuri Shimbun quotes Hatoyama as saying to the party caucus recently that the campaign's detoll promises would be "modified according to circumstances" - those being budget shortfalls and the state of the economy.

He also spoke of the lack of public support for ending tolls.

He is quoted: "I'm not sure if it's right to force things onto the public that they don't want, even though we effectively drew up a contract with them [through the manifesto]... It seems [the detoll] policy isn't that popular. We want to see the extent to which the policy can bring about positive economic effects by making expressways toll-free in selected areas."

Kodo Ogata, a veteran toll guy in Tokyo tells us prime minister Hatoyama has never been fully invested in the anti-toll policy. It was adopted by his party at a time when a rival Naoto Kan was the leader.

Kan was "solely responsible" for the anti-toll policy of the Democratic Party, Ogata tell us. The party lost the election decisively after the policy was announced but it has never been revised, just de-emphasized.

And it has been qualified. In response to the criticism that elimination of tolls would increase traffic and worsen congestion Hatoyama has said tolls would not be removed in places where congestion would result. He has also said detolling will be done only on a trial basis.

Transport secretary toll supporter

Seiji Maehara, Hatoyama's appointee as secretary of transportation - his title is Minister for Infrastructure Land Transport & Tourism - got the job despite having penned a pro-toll magazine article this May that got the headline "I have long been opposed to eliminating tolls."

In the job Maehara has been busy on non-highway issues and has said little on tolls. The department's website has nothing on the issue that we can find.

Still detolling is official Democrat policy and specifies that the government will budget Y1.3t ($14.3b) per year for 60 years to service and pay down the debt of the toll authorities.

"It looks almost impossible," says Ogata as well as being, he thinks, misguided. He says it's implications have never been properly researched.

BACKGROUND: Japan is the world's leader in the intensity of tolling which covers virtually the whole network of expressways some 9,000km (6500 miles) in length. It is also the world leader in total toll revenues collected - some $19b/year. Tolls tend to be pooled, so that profitable tollroads subsidize unprofitable ones. In recent years a few expressways have been built with tax money.

Japan was slow to adopt electronic tolling but now transponders account for the majority of tolls taken  - albeit the readers are retrofitted to existing slowspeed toll plazas. With a fully interoperable national system the takeup of transponders has been rapid and extensive.

The toll operators are starting to take advantage of electronic tolling to add toll points and reduce the toll per toll point, making their pricing fairer. Much of the original system was based on a crude toll on entry making for a flat toll regardless of distance traveled.

see earlier report:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/4341

TOLLROADSnews 2009-12-06