NAGOYA (Kyodo) -- Automatic lanes at more than 80 tollgates on expressways in Tokyo and six other Japanese prefectures were shut down Sunday after the collection system suffered an outage.

Central Nippon Expressway Co. is investigating the cause and attempting to restore the system after a failure occurred in the electronic toll collection's control system early Sunday, the Nagoya-based company said.

As of 10:30 a.m., the toll collection system on 15 of the 23 expressway sectors operated by the company was out of service. Lanes with staffed toll booths remained open to traffic.

It was the first large-scale system failure of the electronic toll collection system, called ETC, since Japan Highway Public Corp. was privatized in 2005, the company said.

Tollgates hit with the system disruption include those in the Fuji interchange on the Tomei Expressway in Shizuoka Prefecture as well as the Chofu interchange on the Chuo Expressway in Tokyo.