A Study on Governance for Cooperative Road Facilities Management

摘要

In Japan, much of road facilities have been built during 60s and 70s and the major maintenance should be carried out for these facilities in the near future. For this, Asset Management System is becoming very important nowadays. However, not many municipalities have implemented the Asset Management system because of the budget and human resource constraints. In order to keep important road facilities with the adequate maintenance level, it is impossible for local municipalities to maintain all facilities by themselves. For relatively less important facilities, it may be efficient to encourage residents to support maintenance works such as cleaning and daily monitoring. Based on above, this study proposes a “cooperative road facility management” where road facilities are maintained by various stakeholders such as local municipalities, private companies, road users and residents through taking part in the maintenance works. In other words, we propose the governance of the road facilities by cooperation of the stakeholders. To construct the framework of the cooperative road facility management, we review the advanced schemes which have been put in practice. The practices are summarized from four perspectives; “cooperation among municipalities‟, “private-sector participation”, “residents participation” and “educating supporters”. As a result, the prospect of the cooperative road facilities management is shown with the role of the stakeholders and the cooperation among them. We also point out that intermediary organization is important to smoothly realize the cooperation among stakeholders. The organization should be composed of residents, private sectors and municipalities. We also clarify the framework of the organization.