Article updated: 12/4/2012 6:28 AM

Japan tunnel disaster shows aging of public works

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Yamanashi Prefectural police investigators arrive Tuesday at Central Japan Expressway Co. to search the office in Otsuki, near Tokyo. Police were searching the offices Tuesday of the company operating an expressway tunnel where hundreds of concrete ceiling slabs collapsed onto moving vehicles below, killing nine people.

Associated Press

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The deadly collapse last weekend of hundreds of concrete ceiling slabs in a tunnel outside Tokyo is raising calls for more spending on Japan's aging infrastructure, but the country might simply not have the money. Nine people were killed Sunday in the tunnel, a major link between the capital and central Japan that opened in 1977 at the peak of the country's postwar road construction boom. Police searched the tunnel operator's offices Tuesday, looking for evidence of negligence.