Japan’s ETC toll system

So, I have a funny story to tell from my trip to Japan in 2007. We arrived at the airport, and my in-laws were waiting to pick us up. Baggage was stowed in the back of the car, Baby was safely tucked in her car seat, and we were off. As soon as drove out of the parking log, we come to a toll booth, but amazingly, my father-in-law didn’t stop or even slow down. I was sitting on the front-passenger seat, and threw my hands out in front of me yelling otōsan! (father, father-in-law, etc) as he drove through the toll-booth, but at the last minute, the gates automatically opened, and the car chimed something in Japanese. I was sure we’d hit the gates, but everything went fine.

Confused and freaked out, I looked at my wife who shook her head at me for being so stupid.1 I was a victim of the (relatively) new ETC service in Japan. Electronic Toll Collector services, or ETC, are not new to Japan, but in Japan they are pretty universal on major highways and such. I saw them in Ireland too in certain popular roads in Dublin, like the East Link Bridge, so I am just behind the times. We have no such tolls in Seattle (yet), so I had no idea electronic tolls existed that fateful day in Japan.

Anyway, in urban Japan, you probably won’t use the car much because trains are so universal and overall quite good, but if driving to the countryside you will often run into toll-booths or ryōkinjō (料金場), and at these tollbooths, there are special lanes for ETC people (which are faster since the process is automatic) and regular lanes for paying a cash/coin toll the old-fashioned way. ETC users get that “fast-track” in other words. Tolls are pretty expensive in Japan, and it’s hard to carry that much change around all the time, so the ETC is pretty popular, but certainly not cheap either. When we drive from Kawasaki to Tochigi Prefecture where my wife’s relatives are, it costs about ¥1000 or $11, €8 one-way.

ETC is widely used now, and you can see it mentioned on Japanese news from time to time if rates change or during the holidays, when people try to find the cheapest route from one point to another, like from Chiba Prefecture’s peninsula to Tokyo, or from Tokyo the Kansai area. Of course, some folks try to cheat the system, through methods like tailgating, but it’s probably not the best way to save ¥450 ($5, €4).

Since some readers here live in Japan, I’d love to hear your stories with ETC, or from anyone else who’s an ETC user in the EU, US or elsewhere. Hopefully your story is not as embarrassing as mine was. ;)

1 She still does a very funny impersonation of me saying “otōsan!” from that incident. After all these years, it never gets old I guess. Really, you had to be there. :-p

About Doug

A Buddhist, father and Japanophile / Koreaphile.
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3 Responses to Japan’s ETC toll system

  1. Jaime McLeod says:

    Wow, I can’t believe they don’t have electronic tolls in Seattle. They’ve had them for at least a decade in Pennsylvania, where I grew up, and they even have them here in the backwards “prefecture of Maine.” ;o) You mount the little electronic box on your windshield, behind your rearview mirror. They call it an EasyPass.

    In both places, there are no gates, just a red light. Any time someone drives through the red light, a camera photographs their license plate. We also have unmanned tollbooths where you can throw change into a bucket. Sometimes the change reader malfunctions, and you could keep throwing coins in until you run out, without changing the red light. In those cases, you just drive away after you’ve put in the correct amount. The camera catches your plate, and if they don’t have very many photos of your plate, they just let it slide. If, however, you make a practice of driving through either the EasyPass lane or the automated change lane without paying, you get a bill from the state for the exact amount of tolls that you owe – they don’t even add on a processing fee for their time and postage costs (this actually shocks me). They give you a certain amount of time to pay it – about a month, maybe – before they turn it in to the police and you get a ticket.

    In one way, it’s a pretty friendly system. They don’t assume anyone is trying to be dishonest, because they know that the equipment doesn’t always work correctly. On the other hand, though, I know some people who abuse this system and never bother to sign up for an EasyPass or keep change in their cars because they know they’ll just get a bill eventually. I can’t imagine how many work hours and postage fees are involved in collecting delinquent tolls.

    Anyway, I don’t drive on toll roads enough to justify having an EasyPass, but it’s a neat system. You actually get a bit of a discount from using it, which is nice for daily commuters.

  2. Jeff says:

    Wow, yeah, Seattle does sound really behind the times. We’ve had them in the East–from upstate New York all the way down to Texas–for many years now. But that’s a funny story, anyway.

  3. Doug says:

    Ha ha ha yeah I won “Dumbass of the Year” that year (got runner-up in 2009 ;) ). Yeah I literally have never seen toll booths until that incident, as I don’t think they’re used on the
    West Coast at all. Seattle badly needs
    them though given crumbling infrastrucutre and poor budget.

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