Hi Everyone!, first post here because I’m interested in your experiences driving in Japan.
It shows up as the first photo on the wikipedia page for ‘Expressways of Japan’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressways_of_Japan#/media/File:TOYOTA_Interchange_on_TOMEI_EXPWY_and_SHIN-TOMEI_EXPWY.jpg
…and I thought nothing of it until I spent a few seconds closely looking at it, and the more I looked, the weirder it got. I’m not a highway design expert but it seems so out of character from the popular perception of quality infrastructure in Japan.
For example,
1. There’s apparently a single sound wall as far as I can tell, and it’s not even on the edge, but near the middle of the expressway… what does it even do?
If it is actually a sound wall I can’t fathom why they intentionally avoided putting it on the edge where the houses are.
2. The merge lane on the bottom seems to be absurdly short, like 20 car-lengths short. Or like 3 semi truck lengths. Seems like it guarantees crashes.
3. Almost no traffic lights, or even stop signs!, on the intersections between the smaller roads. It seems like a pretty large interchange with many roads criss-crossing situated between several neighbourhoods, how little used must it be to not warrant even a stop sign?
4. The number of small one lane roads, I see at least 16, in addition to the larger roads. Every alleyway has a narrow road leading to the interchange, that breaks up the already small plots of farmland…
If most interchanges in suburban areas look likes this in Japan then the design must be intentional, but if this one is uniquely weird maybe the designers stopped caring halfway through?
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/x3m99t/whats_up_with_this_weird_expressway_interchange/
2 comments
My thoughts:
1. The one at the front of the picture? I’d guess it’s preventing sound from the fast moving through-traffic trucks from reaching the houses at the bottom right. The cars on the interchange ramp are (should be) travelling slower and are likely smaller vehicles so it’s less of an issue. There’s no other houses as close so there’s no sound walls elsewhere. Edit: It could have been added on after noise complaints.
2. It’s a merge of interchange ramps, people shouldn’t be going that fast.
3. It’s rural farmland – stop signs work fine.
4. I don’t really understand this question. Are you asking why the farms are so small? Japan has protectionism against super farms so the small plots are likely different farmers. The roads are for access to their individual houses/farms.
[Google maps link to interchange](https://www.google.com/maps/search/Toyota+City+interchange/@35.0196162,137.1379875,715a,35y,77.3h,49.37t/data=!3m1!1e3)
My understanding:
2. The merge line is pretty long, you can see the left most line separated by thicker strips that extend all the way down.
3. There’s a rule that says, on an intersection. vehicles on “smaller roads” must yield to “larger roads”. Which basically means, if you’re on smaller roads, there’s a “stop sign”, whether the physical stop sign is there or not.