Kisogawa Bridge

While politicians in Tokyo debate the gasoline taxes, which go to building new roads in remote areas of Japan, Kentaro Yamada at Nagoya University worries about aging bridges. He has inspected a number of steel truss bridges around the country. One of them is the Kisogawa Ohashi Bridge in Mie Prefecture, where fractures were found last year. He notes that the government provides generous budgets for constructing new roads, but it neglects to set aside enough funds for road and bridge maintenance and repair.

Deterioration is an issue for all highway bridges in Japan, many of which were built during the nation's rapid economic growth period. The rush to expand infrastructure led to cost-cutting by using minimal materials needed for the bridges' expected performance.

However, traffic density soon increased drastically. For example, nearly 60,000 vehicles cross the Kisogawa Ohashi Bridge each day, 60 percent of which are heavy vehicles. Many of these vehicles are loaded over the legal limit, causing the bridge to experience extremely harsh conditions.

Asahi: Use funds to maintain, repair existing bridges

Japan has the World's longest suspension bridge, between the main island of Honshu and the southern island of Shikoku.

How about replacing the gasoline taxes with an environmental tax? This was discussed by the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) in 2002. European countries, including Britain, Germany and Sweden, already have introduced environment taxes. While the systems vary from country to country, they basically tax fossil fuels, such as gasoline, to curb the consumption of these fuels. The tax revenues are used for anti-global warming measures and to fund the development of environmentally friendly technologies. Sounds like something Japan should introduce in 2008.

Yomiuri: Environment tax may be needed