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Japan Roads
Road passenger and freight transport expanded
considerably
during the 1980s as private ownership of motor vehicles
greatly
increased along with the quality and extent of the
nation's roads.
Passenger transport by automobiles and buses in 1990
totaled 853.06
billion passenger-kilometers, up 9.3 percent over the
previous
year. The Japan Railways Group companies operates
long-distance bus
service on the nation's expanding expressway network. In
addition
to relatively low fares and deluxe seating, the buses are
well
utilized because they continue service during the night
when air
and train service is limited. The cargo sector also grew
rapidly in
the 1980s, recording 274.2 billion ton-kilometers in 1990.
The
freight handled by motor vehicles, mainly trucks, in 1990,
was over
6 billion tons, accounting for 90 percent of domestic
freight
tonnage and about 50 percent of ton-kilometers.
The total length of roads in Japan reached about 1.1
million
kilometers in 1990
(see
fig. 6). About 69 percent of the
roads were
paved, compared with only about 40 percent in 1978.
Efforts to
upgrade roads, however, have not kept up with increases in
automobile ownership. In the late 1980s, many roads had
reached a
saturation point, and traffic jams were especially serious
in large
urban areas. There was a vigorous government plan to
improve the
situation by constructing an additional 14,000 kilometers
of
highways in the 1990s. The 1988 opening of the Seto-Ohashi
section
of the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge project provided a
long-awaited direct
link between Honshu and relatively undeveloped Shikoku.
Data as of January 1994
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