TOKYO: Japan’s infrastructure ministry will additionally select as early as this fiscal year “michi no eki” roadside rest stations that will serve as bases for relief activities and temporary shelters in times of disasters.

The ministry plans to increase the number of such roadside stations to about 100 in the future from the current 39 so that each of the country’s 47 prefectures will have one to two.

Criteria for the designation will include proximity to expressway interchanges because selected michi no eki facilities are going to be used as relay points for goods transportation once a disaster occurs.

Such roadside stations, positioned as wide-area disaster preparedness bases in prefectural governments’ disaster management plans, currently need to meet conditions such as having a 2,500-square-meter or larger parking lot. In 2021, 39 roadside stations in 36 prefectures were selected.

After a powerful earthquake happened in the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan, in January this year, the Japanese government and the Self-Defense Forces opened relief support bases at a roadside station at Noto Airport in the city of Wajima. As it has stocks such as emergency food, the facility temporarily accepted many affected people.

The ministry plans to designate more roadside stations to prepare for major disasters.

It is considering additionally setting conditions for selecting roadside stations, such as being located within 5 kilometers of the nearest expressway interchange or next to an important logistics road.

According to the ministry, 215 roadside stations across the country meet those requirements, and 186 of them have a 2,500-squar-meter or larger parking lot.

For additional selections, it will seek proposals from local governments that operate those facilities within fiscal 2024, which ends next March.

Subsidies will be provided intensively for selected facilities, which will be required to make efforts to stockpile emergency food and other items needed for temporary shelters.

JIJI Press