Ensuring an Appropriate Level of Expressway Management by Using Outcome Indicators : Role of JEHDRA after Privatization of Highway Public Corporations in Japan

摘要

The role of the Japan Expressway Holding and Debt Repayment Agency (JEHDRA) and the privatized expressway companies is to promote the establishment of a national highway network and to hand over safe and good-quality expressways to the next generation. To this end, the six private expressway companies that came into being after the privatization of highway public corporations implement proper and efficient management of expressways in order to ensure that they are maintained in good condition. JEHDRA receives annual reports on the maintenance and management of expressways from the expressway companies and confirms, on site, how they manage expressways. In the reports on maintenance and management, each company discloses and evaluates objective indicators (outcome indicators) that are easy to understand for customers. JEHDRA selects seven of the outcome indicators it collects from the six companies and then discloses them. By comparing changes over years and differences between companies, more transparency in the expressway business can be achieved through the disclosure of information, and more structural maintenance work, such as seismic reinforcement, can be achieved. As a result, a more efficient business scheme can be provided by activating the management cycle based on the companies’ indicators.