‘Cost of Maintenance and Management,’ and ‘Cost of Repairs and Upgrades,’ and outlines the cost reduction and revenue securing measures to counter the deficiency calculated for future costs in the white paper. One of the specified action plans is the comprehensive private sector consignment of the road maintenance and management business, which we discussed in Chapter 2, Section 2.

In addition, as part of showing the results of the plan, for those ‘maintenance and management’ and ‘repairs and upgrades’ costs that can be calculated, they have published the estimated total cost savings. If all the measures in the plan are implemented, an annual saving of JPY300 million and a 12% reduction is forecast compared to the expense forecast (not including sewage) in the white paper. However, despite this cost saving effect, there is still a deficiency calculated for the budget amount. Therefore, in addition to the estimated measures, they are promoting further initiatives for issues that cannot be reflected in the plan’s estimate calculations (Figure 2-3-22).

Figure 2-3-22 Effect of Cost Reduction from Infrastructure Management Plan

Types of infrastructure	Estimated cost of ‘Plan’ (JPY billion/year)	(1) Estimated cost of status quo (JPY billion/year)	(2) Cost difference between status quo and ‘Plan’ (JPY 100 million/year)	Percentage of difference (2)/(1)	Executive amount of FY2010 (JPY100 million/year)
Roads	Roadways, pedestrian walkways, tree planting, bridges	8.92	11.67	-2.75	-23.58%	8.57
Roadside trees	2.24	2.20	0.04	1.62%	1.34
Information signs	0.04	0.02	0.02	75.88%	0.02
Street lights	2.10	1.52	0.58	38.43%	1.52
Road subtotal	13.29	15.41	-2.12	-13.74%	11.45
Parks	8.25	9.13	-0.88	-9.67%	7.33
Sewage	56.16	—	—	—	35.86
Total (JPY100 million/year)	Not including sewage (1 year)	21.54	24.54	-3.00	-12.23%	18.78
Including sewage (1 year)	77.70	—	—	—	54.64

Source) Fuchu City Infrastructure Management Plan

## (2) Initiative to Reduce Lifecycle Cost

Aomori prefecture has implemented a special dedicated system for efficient management of their bridges. They are doing a simulation repair plan that would extend the lifecycle of bridges to their maximum, and to get a uniform grasp of the state of all the bridges.

In Aomori, the many bridges that had been built after 1970 is approaching the time when upgrades are necessary (Figure 2-3-23). In addition, they were in a difficult financial situation, with the 'Fiscal Reform Plan' which had been established in 2003 pressing for further budget cuts. Within such circumstances, in order to maintain and manage bridges in a well-planned, cost efficient way, they set up a bridges asset management team in 2004 as an effort to have a long-term plan to efficiently and effectively manage the bridges and minimize and level the repair and upgrading costs.

To incorporate the principle of preventative maintenance, the soundness of the bridge must be recovered at the start of operations, and this incurs initial cost. They conducted a budget simulation for system operations by using the newly developed bridge management system (BMS) $ ^{66} $ .

Though the repair cost at the start of operations was estimated to cost approximately three times more than the previous