Cars are seen backed up near the Hachioji tollgate on the Chuo Expressway after ETC lanes were closed due to technical issues, in Hachioji, Tokyo, on April 6, 2025. (Mainichi/Natsuki Nishi)
NAGOYA — Central Nippon Expressway Co. (NEXCO Central) announced May 2 that it would waive tolls for vehicles that passed through affected areas during a major failure of Japan’s electronic toll collection (ETC) system in early April, an about-face from its original plan.
The disruption, which lasted approximately 38 hours, impacted the Tomei and Chuo expressways and other toll roads. For drivers who had already paid tolls for this period, the expressway operator said it would refund the full amount through the ETC mileage program or similar methods.
Initially, NEXCO Central had asked motorists to apply to pay missed tolls later. The company has since reversed that policy, citing the “serious nature of the disruption and the significant inconvenience” it had caused to drivers.
The ETC system failure occurred at around 12:30 a.m. on April 6 and affected toll booths at a total of 106 locations and smart interchanges across 17 expressway routes in eight prefectures. That afternoon, NEXCO Central took the unusual step of opening toll barriers at affected locations, allowing vehicles to pass with tolls to be paid later.
During the equivalent 38 hours on March 30-31, a week before the system failure, some 960,000 vehicles passed through the same gates, and NEXCO Central expected that the number subject to deferred payment would be about the same. But the actual number of applications to make the payments as of 10 p.m. on April 15 reached only around 3.8% of that figure, or 36,000.
(Japanese original by Kohei Tsukamoto, Nagoya News Department)
AloJapan.com