On the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the motorway from Honbetsu to Ashoro is engineered to the highest standards: fully separated intersections, a hard shoulder and stretches of dual carriageway for overtaking. All it lacks is vehicles.
Intended as the first stage of a highway reaching almost to the Sea of Okhotsk, the 13.2km stretch is used by about 1,300 vehicles a day, similar to a main road in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.
The motorway marks the apex of Japan’s massive programme of public works in the 1990s and early 2000s — and as pressure mounts on other countries around the world to embark on major spending drives to combat the economic impact of coronavirus, it also offers a lesson in what can go wrong.
您已阅读13%（723字），剩余87%（4819字）包含更多重要信息，订阅以继续探索完整内容，并享受更多专属服务。