ITS the Smartway

Japan’s numbers just don’t add up—120 million people, 70 million vehicles travel each day, approximately 1 million people killed or injured in traffic-related accidents each year and 5.3 billion hours lost due to congestion resulting in an economic loss of 12 trillion yen, according to the Japanese Ministry of Construction.

In this small country, few answers can be found to the large problem of traffic congestion. But one answer may provide a short- and long-term solution¾ ITS.

ITS World takes a look at the present and future of ITS in Japan.

Five organizations are engaged in and responsible for Japan’s ITS-related activities. Specifically, these organizations include the Ministry of Construction, National Police Agency, Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. These five also promote ITS via another avenue, the Vehicle, Road and Traffic Intelligence Society (VERTIS), an industry-academic ITS promotion organization and the ISO/TC 204 National Committee that promotes the international standardization of ITS.

According to the ITS Handbook 2000-2001 released by the Japanese Ministry of Construction, the number of Japanese vehicles outfitted with car navigation units incorporating vehicle information and communication system (VICS) receivers, which provides vehicles with real-time road information, currently exceeds 2 million.

Approximately, 600 tollbooths have been equipped with systems to incorporate electronic toll collection (ETC) with nearly 300 additional tollbooths to be equipped with these same capabilities in the next few years.

Research and development centering around advanced cruise-assist highway systems (AHS) and advanced safety vehicles (ASV) have resulted in the development of the Smart Cruise System. Designed to improve safety while driving, Smart Cruise provides a variety of driver-related safety functions that support the driver’s actions to avoid accidents.

The culmination of VICS, ETC and AHS/ASV results in the country’s next-generation system called Smartway, which will support and integrate all of these ITS services. Smartway will officially be introduced in 2003 on the New Tomei and Meishin Expressway.

In an interview with ITS-Review Japan, a newsletter from Japan’s Highway Industry Development Organization, in late 2000, Kato Kotaro, deputy director, road traffic control division, road bureau, Ministry of Construction, commented on ITS activities in Japan.

Kotaro said, "The two best applications that characterize the future potential of ITS in Japan are ETC and AHS."

"After several years of research and development, last spring we began introducing ETC on the expressways for trial operation," said Kotaro.

He went on to say, "The idea was to establish a nationwide toll-road standard and develop a system that would let one transponder handle a variety of electronic fee-based applications."

In terms of AHS, Kotaro cited Smart Cruise 21 and Demo 2000 and the various vehicle pilot testing that occurred at each of these, as stepping stones toward the country’s development of this system.

VICS is a digital data communication system that provides the latest necessary traffic information to drivers via car navigation systems. Inaugurated in Japan in 1986, VICS is transmitted from beacons installed on the roadside to on-board navigation systems, in the direction of traffic flow, to suit driver needs.

As of September 2000, shipments of VICS exceeded 2.28 million units since the start of service in April 1996, according to the ITS Handbook.

The increasing need for real-time road traffic information in addition to the areas covered by the service, the increase of car navigation units using VICS receivers and a reduction in unit price, greatly contributed to the rise in popularity of the VICS unit.

Service areas covered by VICS were initially limited to roads in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, expressways up to 62 miles (100 km) from Tokyo and the entire Tomei and Hanshin Expressways.

As of March 1998, service extended to all expressways nationwide, all roads in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, Osaka area, as well as the Aichi, Kyoto, Nagano and Hyogo Prefectures.

Additionally, VICS has been provided on the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world, since April 1998.

As of June 2000, coverage was completed in Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Hokkaido, Miyago, Miyazaki and Okinawa Prefectures with expansion to cover the entire nation.

Officially launched in April 2000, the ETC plans outlined a program that will reach 800 tollbooths by March 2002, and increase to 900 by March 2003.

The country’s ETC system charges vehicles according to type and distance traveled. Unified ETC standards allow users of the system to incorporate one transponder per vehicle which can handle tollroads that are managed by a variety of different systems.

According to the ITS Handbook, when ETC was developed for Japan, the following points were agreed upon:

• Specifications are to be unified to make the system available to users nationwide and compatible for trans-actions on all toll roads;

• A 5.8 GHz-band active system adopted as a DSRC system to ensure precise communication between the vehicles and roadway units;

• The "two-piece" method using an on-board equipment and an integrated circuit card to cope with future functional development and to allow multi-purpose use of integrated circuit cards; and

• Integrated circuit cards that incorporate devices such as a CPU allowing mutual verification with other terminal equipment and coding of recorded data for security.

In order to make the country’s ETC system safe and convenient for all users, the Organization for Road System Enhancement was founded in September 1999. ORSE offers advanced information security services that consist of the disclosure of the standard for data security and the provision of identification information.

The standard for data security is a common rule for protecting toll and private information from forgery, falsification and bugging, and is directly disclosed to only companies which have signed a security standard document for non-stop automatic toll collection and a secrecy agreement.

According to the ITS Handbook, the Smart Cruise Systems are being jointly developed by the Ministry of Transport which has been promoting the research and development of ASV and the Ministry of Construction which has been promoting the research and development of AHS.

Smart Cruise provides the following three functions to drivers, when Smartway detects and provides in real-time to smart cars the information on obstacles in front, vehicles in an intersection, location on the road and road surface conditions:

• Information provision to make up for the delay in the driver’s detection;

• Warnings to alert misjudgment; and

• Cruise assistance to correct erroneous operation.

Rear-end collision warning is another system incorporated into Smart Cruise. The Kinki Regional Construction Bureau of the Ministry of Construction installed the system in 1994 at a road curve on the Meihan National Route that was prone to accidents. In the system, cameras automatically detect congestion, accidents and/or broken-down vehicles. Related information is then displayed on message signs alerting vehicles of the upcoming problems. This particular application reduced the number of accidents by one-half.

Several services have been chosen for Smart Cruise based on their effectiveness to reduce accidents. Support for the prevention of the following areas are scheduled to be launched from 2003:

• Forward obstacle collisions;

• Overshooting on curves;

• Lane departure;

• Crossing collisions;

• Right turn collisions; and

• Collisions with pedestrians crossing streets.

Additonally, support for road surface condition information for maintaining headway is scheduled.

According to Kotaro’s comments in ITS-Review Japan, the country is incorporating information technology to transform the current roadways into Smartway. Smartway, which serves as a platform for integrating ITS applications systems, will be introduced in several areas around Japan from 2003.

"This transformation," said Kotaro, "will change the relationships between roads and vehicles, as well as roads and people."

"Until now, roads were roads and vehicles were vehicles," said Kotaro. "But with Smartway, they will be organically linked with a unified system."

He went on to say that Smartway adds a new approach to reducing accidents because of the communication between the road and the vehicle.

The goal of Smartway is to reduce traffic accidents in Japan about 50% by the year 2015 with the

additional expectation of relieving congestion, which will, in turn, benefit the environment.

Based upon Japan’s investments in Smartway, the system may offer a new and powerful solution for the road traffic problems faced in the 21st century.

The Ministry of Construction noted that the Smartway budget for fiscal year 2001 calls for a total of 88,300 million yen, with 8,800 million yen allocated for research and development and 79,500 million yen for deployment.

In order to get Smartway from the drawing board to the roadway, the Ministry of Construction established the Smartway Project Advisory Committee in February 1992 to clarify the significance, functions, requirements and measures for Smartway. Chaired by Shoichiro Toyoda, honorary president of the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations, the committee, in collaboration with numerous global ITS-based organizations, submitted to the Minister of Construction a proposal titled "Making Smartway a Reality¾ Implementation of a National Infrastructure: Ready for the 21st Century."

Based on the findings of this proposal, the outline for Smartway was established and progress to implement these findings approved.

The Ministry of Construction has been actively promoting ITS and the nationwide information highway with the following goals in mind:

• To find solutions to problems such as congestion, accidents and impact on the environment;

• To promote economic growth by creating new markets and industries;

• To enhance the quality of life;

• To activate regional deployment; and

• To make Japan a safer place to live.

In regards to ITS, the ministry has been promoting the development of ITS standards to assure compatibility and inter-connectibility among different systems, and the research, development and implementation of the system.

According to the ministry, these activities have been pursued in cooperation with various domestic and international ITS-related organizations with the goal of applying these standards toward the infrastructure construction that supports various ITS services and second-generation roads such as Smartway that function as a common platform for ITS.