SMART TRANSPORTATION IN JAPAN.

Japan has some of the most advanced "smart" motor vehicle transportation technology in the world. It needs it. Roads are crowded and traffic jams are nightmarish. Also: Fundamental to Japanese culture is the idea of "finding one's way". This habit of mind is present in the country's richly evocative gardens designed so that as one wends one's way through, surprising views and compositions seem to materialize.

Unfortunately, where finding one's way works with deeply revealing aesthetics, it doesn't work so well if you're driving to an address in, say, Tokyo where you've never been before. In most neighborhoods, the streets aren't named, only the intersections. And to make matters worse, or more aesthetic, depending how late you happen to be, houses are mostly numbered in the order in which they were built, not how they're ordered along a street.

Japan, therefore, has in place a computerized FM radio broadcast system that exchanges signals with a huge array of 28,000 beacons along the nation's roads.

This exchange of signals allows the system to instantly inform drivers of congested roads. The system is so sophisticated that it can calculate how many seconds it would take to drive through any block in any city in the country, according to a recent Associated Press (AP) story, and supply drivers with the fastest route.

So one would think that Japanese drivers would be lined up around the block to install the system in their cars. But, says the AP, only 1-million of Japan's 70-million vehicles, 1.4 percent, has so far installed the system. Part of the reason is cost. A low end relatively inexpensive version of the system delivers only a small percentage of the information available. The really helpful system is expensive. Models cost between US$1,000 and US$2,000, and if you want "more timely information", add another US$240.

And, says the AP, the Japanese Government isn't much help. The agency that oversees the country's roads has been criticized for being corrupt and inefficient. The current Government is trying to privatize it.

On the horizon: Telematics. Cars linked with other cars, computers and communications. Information about accidents, or a picture of an approaching emergency vehicle can be passed from car to car in real time. Pedestrians will even be able to use the system. But integrating all these technologies will take time.

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