In conventional road administration, progress was measured against the tenet of quantitative extension. However, in recent years the measure of progress has shifted to an identifiable result when viewed from the user's perspective. Since fiscal 1993, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has forged ahead with improvements to roads and traffic using many approaches, evolving away from the 'quantity' expedient manner of road administration. In fiscal 2003, an 'evaluation system' will be widely employed, where both the program evaluation and the project evaluation are rated on an outcome index. This evaluation system is underpinned by Intelligent Transport Systems.
Ever-progressing Information Technology and a myriad of growing communication infrastructures enable a thorough and detailed analysis of a roster of required data for evaluation quickly and precisely.
For each individual roadwork project, a shift in the congestion or the accident situation following roadwork needs to be qualitatively measured to discern the effectiveness of the work. In this regard, the advent of probe car (refer to
4-9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14) is simply a successful means of utilizing numerical evaluation in the real world.
As a case in point, the probe car data has quantitatively confirmed that the lane doubling of the Ariake Bridge in Niigata alleviated congestion.
Post evaluation of Ariake Bridge lane doubling project in Niigata prefecture
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Introduction of evaluation system
