To the public, highways and roads are the most familiar public utility. Therefore, every people have their own opinions and complain against highway and road administration. The public and the groups, for instance trucking industries and automobile manufacturers, have strong interests in highway and road policy, and infl uence its decision-making processes. During the last decade, Japan has experienced several failures in the highway and road policy-making. This paper picks up three policy topics such as the privatization of the Japan Highway Public Corporation, the transfer of automobile related taxes from the earmarked expenditure for highways and roads to the general account, and the change of the metropolitan expressway toll structure from a fl at fare system to a kilometer-based fare one. These three cases indicate that the decision-making process of the highway and road policy cannot result in optimal situations. For more appropriate highway and road policy, this paper proposes introducing constitutional rules into decision-making processes for the highway and road policy in Japan.
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