Crisis in Japan / Who Bears Responsibility for Infrastructure Repair Costs? Expenses for Renovating Aging Structures May be Pushed onto Customers

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:03 JST, March 25, 2026

This is a second in a series on the critical situation surrounding Japan’s aging infrastructure networks.

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Transportation safety is the top management priority for railway operators. Since the start of this year, however, a series of incidents leading to extended service suspensions have occurred on rail lines belonging to East Japan Railway Co. (JR East): The Yamanote and Keihin-Tohoku lines experienced power outages, while the Joban and Utsunomiya lines saw multiple incidents of worn overhead wires breaking.

President Yoichi Kise apologized at a press conference on Feb. 10 for the “tremendous inconvenience and trouble” that had been caused by the service suspensions, and he promised to prevent any recurrence.

Over the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, JR East cut its spending on maintenance and management of overhead wires and other equipment by a total of ¥80 billion due to declining revenues.

“That may have created risks for the future,” Kise said, indicating the company’s commitment to strengthen maintenance and management of its installations.

Railway operators are currently focusing efforts on measures to counteract the aging of infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels, many of which were built shortly after World War II.

The Shinkansen bullet train — a vital artery for the Japanese economy — began operating in 1964 with the opening of the Tokaido line. The Sanyo, Tohoku and Joetsu lines, all built by the now-defunct public corporation Japanese National Railways, have now been in operation for over 40 years.

Since 2013, Central Japan Railway Co. has conducted repair work on a total of 148 kilometers of concrete bridges and 68.6 kilometers of tunnels along the Tokaido Shinkansen line. JR East plans to renovate such structures along the Tohoku and Joetsu lines between fiscal 2031 and 2040.

The enormous costs of this work — about ¥730 billion for the Tokaido line and ¥1.04 trillion for the Tohoku and Joetsu lines — are all borne by the operators.

“The impact on the management of these for-profit companies is significant,” an official said.

Highways also aging

Japan’s highways, which support the transportation of both people and goods, are also facing problems due to aging. About 40% of the country’s roughly 10,000 total kilometers of highways have been in service for over 40 years.

The Metropolitan Expressway, whose first section opened in 1962, now covers 327 kilometers in Tokyo and the surrounding areas and handles about 1 million vehicles per day. It is now undergoing large-scale anti-aging work.

On the expressway’s Haneda Line route, which connects central Tokyo to Haneda Airport, the Higashi-Shinagawa Pier — which opened in 1963 — has been under renewal since 2016, at a cost of ¥162.7 billion.

Harsh environmental conditions have accelerated the deterioration of some highway structures, unexpectedly forcing some repairs to be made.

On the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Expressway, a set of three routes linking the islands of Honshu and Shikoku, replacement work is now underway on the expansion joints of the 1.6-kilometer-long Ohnaruto Bridge.

The bridge, connecting Hyogo and Tokushima prefectures, opened in 1985, and in the decades afterward its expansion joints deteriorated due to corrosion from salt spray. The bridge’s expansion joints are a crucial part of its structure, as they connect bridge decks that expand and contract due to changing temperatures

The cost to replace these joints will amount to about ¥1.7 billion, equivalent to 1% of the bridge’s ¥144 billion original construction cost.

“We were not expecting during the design phase that we would have to replace the expansion joints at this stage,” said Yukio Mori, the director of Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Expressway Co.’s Naruto Operation Center, which manages the bridge.

In principle, companies that manage infrastructure such as railways and expressways cover the costs of anti-aging measures themselves. This means that fares or tolls will increase if this work becomes unaffordable to them.

“As these structures age, increased future renewal costs are unavoidable,” said Hayato Hosoi, a senior consultant at Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. “The costs will be broadly borne by users.”