Takasaki: The Japanese government said Thursday that it plans to create a dedicated lane for self-driving vehicles on the Tohoku Expressway in fiscal 2025 or later.

The plan was presented at a meeting of the government’s council for achieving Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Digital Garden City Nation initiative, held in the city of Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, eastern Japan.

The government has already disclosed its plan to make such a lane on the Shin-Tomei Expressway, which connects the greater Tokyo and Nagoya areas.

The special lane plan for the Tohoku Expressway, which runs between the greater Tokyo area and the Tohoku northeastern region, will be included in a comprehensive plan to improve infrastructure using digital technologies for enriching the lives of people in regional areas. The comprehensive plan is set to be released by the end of March 2024.

Kishida instructed related government agencies to draw up an interim report on the comprehensive plan around September this year.

For the Shin-Tomei Expressway, the autonomous vehicle lane is to be established on a section in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan. The lane, stretching some 100 kilometers, is expected to be opened in fiscal 2024 for late night use.

The government aims to allow self-driving trucks to use the lane in an effort to tackle labor shortages in the transport industry.

It will consider details of the special lane on Tohoku Expressway, such as where it should be established and what time of day it should be opened to autonomous vehicle drivers.

At the day’s meeting, the government also unveiled a plan to hold the first meeting of a new council for the revitalization of regional transportation systems this month.

The government aims to promote unconventional collaborations between regional transportation and other business sectors, such as cooperation between a taxi operator and a day care facility for elderly people to transport facility users.

The council is expected to compile around next April measures to deal with the current situation in which maintaining bus, taxi, train and other transportation services is becoming increasingly difficult in many areas due to depopulation.

JIJI Press