melts were paid from emergency project promotion grants for disaster measures to ensure the safety and comfort of residents and urgently implemented measures to prevent a recurrence of disasters.

## (14) Promoting Soft Measures Including Information and Public Relations for Safety and Comfort

To ensure safety and comfort, soft measures were promoted in addition to hard measures for natural disasters and the status of progress was subject to annual inspections in accordance with the “MLIT General Framework of Soft Measures Promotion for Safety and Comfort”, however, the Great East Japan Earthquake brought to light the need for congruent and integrated evaluations of hard and soft aspects and currently deliberations are in progress following the re-evaluation of the Social Capital Improvement Priority Plan/MLIT Disaster Prevention Operation Plan.

## 2 Secure Transportation Systems Resistant to Disasters

## (1) Ensuring Redundancy and Substitutability

Rail, ports, airports and other facilities are being made disaster resistant in addition to establishing an emergency transport framework for rescue and restoration activities ensures redundancy and substitutability in efforts to minimize the impact to domestic transport activities in the event of a disaster and secure the safety of users.

The road network functions as emergency transport roads during disasters to facilitate early relief, fulfilling its function as a “lifeline”.

## (2) Road Disaster Prevention Measures

To ensure a safe and highly reliable road network against disasters such as heavy rainfall, earthquakes, tsunamis, and heavy snowfall, disaster measures (measures for slopes, embankments, etc.), earthquake disaster measures (seismic reinforcement, etc.), and snowy/cold region measures (development of anti-snow facilities) are being promoted as well as supplementing traffic facilities with disaster prevention functions (turning Michi-no-Eki, service areas, and parking areas into disaster prevention bases as well as developing emergency lines of communication and escape stairs) and in June 2013 the Road Law, etc., was amended to promote the conclusion of disaster alliances with private sector businesses to implement swift road re-openings and establishment of a council for road administrators to create a framework that keeps roads open. In addition, for large-scale disasters, the actual travel data (big data) of public and privately owned vehicles was used to promote initiatives for rapid and accurate assessments and evaluations are underway for a framework to provide disaster information.

Additionally, for regions that sustained devastating damages from the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, road development is being carried out as part of urban area development prioritized in the recovery plan and the development of access roads to expressway interchanges is being promoted. Also, as one measure to reduce tsunami damages, sea level indicator sheets are being added to road sign posts to promote the provision of information on location’s height above the sea level for road users.

## (3) Disaster Prevention Measures for Various Transportation Modes

For railways, subsidies are provided to partially cover the costs of improvement projects such as disaster prevention projects carried out by passenger rail companies including rockfall and avalanche measures as well as coastal protection and improvement projects carried out by Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency (Incorporated Administrative Agency) to maintain the function of the Seikan Tunnel such as the improvement of substations and train control facilities.

For ports, in order to maintain essential regional economic activities during disasters achieve an early restoration of facilities affected by disasters, Wide Area Port Disaster Councils and others are established for the national government, port authority, port users, and others to work together to promote the establishment of a cooperative framework to maintain port functions and facilitate rapid recovery following disasters through wide area coordination of the ports.