Japan’s transport planning at national level, natural disasters, and their interplays

Abstract

This research aims to give an overview of Japan's national-level transport planning schemes, and to discuss interplays between them and recoveries from natural disasters. In the first part, Japan's national spatial development plans and long-term planning schemes for railway, road, port and airport infrastructures are reviewed and compared. In the second part, imbalance embedded in the current planning scheme for different modes are demonstrated making use of recent post-disaster reconstruction processes. A literature-based desktop research is carried out focusing on Japanese literature. These include, but not limited to, official government reports and planning documents, statistical data, and handbooks for experts in the field. All of the long-distance modes have their planning schemes with different levels of comprehensiveness and robustness for each mode. Expressways and high-speed railways have the most comprehensive and robust network plans, while conventional railway, airports and seaports have ones with limited extent. Because of this, post-disaster reconstruction processes from damages to the infrastructure work differently in particular for conventional railways and for expressways in rural areas, which are competitors against each other. Strong framework for intermodal and multimodal transport is still in lack in Japan. Important structural imbalance between modes, in particular between conventional railway and expressway exist, and it becomes obvious in case of a natural disaster. Multimodal planning, frameworks for flexible adjustment of once-made long-term plans, and addressing imbalances regarding robustness between railways and expressways are identified as future challenges of the country's planning schemes.

Research Progress of the Impacts of Comprehensive Transportation Network on Territorial Spatial Development and Protection

“…The Netherlands has a streamlined territorial transportation planning system, and transportation planning is an important content of spatial planning and an important means of realizing spatial development strategies [8,9]; Germany's current transportation planning is categorized as a special plan in the spatial planning system, with strong spatial development attributes, especially in trans-regional infrastructure construction projects with high priority [10]. In 2001, Japan merged the Ministry of Construction, Transportation, Land and Hokkaido Development Office into the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism to plan and control national land space and transportation, and the national transportation network plan was prepared based on the national land formation plan, and the establishment and improvement of Japan's spatial planning system has played an important role in supporting the country's economic development and environmental protection [11].…”

Laboratory and On-Site Tests for Rapid Runway Repair

“…Often it is the only alternative to link remote territories, especially when it comes to emergency [1,3]. For example, airports are strategic when other transport infrastructures are not usable as consequence of a natural disaster (e.g., earthquake, flooding, storm) [4] or when tactical transport should support a peacekeeping mission [5]. For a rescue operation to succeed, a fully functioning system is of the essence [6][7][8]; therefore, repair and maintenance works should be fast and effective to ensure the opportune evenness during the operations [9,10].…”

A Short History of Transport in Japan from Ancient Times to the Present

“…By 1939, only 37 per cent of the planned national road network had been constructed (Table 15). The concept of expressways first appeared in a government document in 1943, when the Ministry of Internal Affairs published a National Automobile Highway Plan of 5,490 km, influenced by the concept of German Autobahns, but the plan was abandoned in 1944 (Shibayama, 2017). By 1940, less than 2 per cent of all roads were paved.…”