The road network is an inevitable infrastructure in Japan's society, which contributes to not only raising quality of nation's daily life and efficiency of logistics, but developing economic activities.
On the other hand, the development of road network has brought about increase of traffic accidents, chronic traffic congestion, environmental deterioration, and energy consumption. There have been social demands for general solutions to these issues.
ITS (intelligent transport systems) that integrates and systematizes pedestrians, drivers, roads, and vehicles as one system, is expected to be one of excellent solutions to these issues.
Under these circumstances, development of Electronic Toll Collection System (ETC) has been undertaken by a public-private partnership. ETC can mitigate traffic congestion at tollgates, increase convenience with drivers by offering cashless payment at tollbooths, and reduce management costs of roads.
In aiming at the development of ITS infrastructure in the 21st century, ETC plays one of key roles of ITS by utilizing wireless communication between an ETC onboard unit (OBU) installed on a vehicle and a roadside station since the vehicle is allowed to pass through tollbooths without stopping.
Regarding secure toll collection, established was the national standards on information security control of ETC system and enforced to the road operators that sought to deploy ETC under the ordinance based on the Act No.7 in 1956.
Under the ordinance, to achieve a unified execution throughout Japan regarding measures for the assurance of information security, the following tasks are mandated to the foundation that is regulated in the Civil Code Article 34 in regards to enforcing the code in efficient and reliable manner:
(1) Provision of the standards for assurance of information security.
(2) Provision of encrypted data for ETC system setup.
Based upon these premises, the Organization for Road System Enhancement ---- ORSE was founded in 1999 after getting assistance and request of all the toll road operators seeking deployment of ETC as well as approval of related industries from automobile, telecommunication, and credit card companies.
ORSE performed the tasks stated above professionally and centrally, and contributed to the improvement of both convenience of road users and efficiency of road traffics by supporting unified and enhanced road systems.
In September 2014, aiming at further development and utilization of ETC and DSRC service ORSE merged with the ITS Service Promotion Association and changed its foundation name to ITS Technology Enhancement Association (ITS-TEA). Since then, ITS-TEA has been devoting itself to contribute to improvement of the quality of civil life and revitalization of national economic activities.