Better transit service

Many analysts believe that Jakarta will no longer be a healthy place to live beyond the year 2000. One of the reasons is the worsening traffic congestion. Today it take three hours for the people who live in the Depok area, 30 kilometers south of Jakarta, to get to their offices downtown. And they require another three hours to get home, crawling along the capital's overcrowded thoroughfares.

Many people blame the congestion on the poor quality of the city's public transit system. Jakarta's transportation services are a major headache for everybody, passengers, motorists and the administration alike.

The municipal administration has long tried to solve the problem, but no comprehensive solution is yet in sight. Millions of Jakartans, who are dependent on buses to move them around the city, see them as a cruel necessity. And police officers have to keep watch every day to see to it that bus drivers do not endanger other motorists, pedestrians and passengers by tearing through the city streets like demons on wheels.

The suffering which passengers have to endure is a cruel fact of life for millions of citizens. No sooner have they hopped into the pickpocket-invested vehicles than they are overwhelmed by the smell of tobacco smoke, their fellow passengers' perspiration, while the poisonous odor of car exhaust follows them up from the street. The general filth of the buses only adds to the stress of using the public transit system.

Even the air conditioned buses designed to offer more comfort and efficiency by carrying a limited number of passengers and making fewer stops have done little to alleviate the plight of the passenger.

Increasingly, people using these special buses, for which the fare is higher than on regular buses, are complaining of diminishing comfort caused by the bus drivers' penchant for picking up a larger number of passengers than the capacity of the buses allow.

Worse still, the human dignity of passengers is immediately called into question when they step on a bus. Once they are on a bus, which is more often overcrowded than not, they experience the process of dehumanization. They are no longer viewed as human beings, but are reduced into bundles of bodies whose individual value is between Rp 300 and Rp 500 (the equivalent of about 15 to 26 US cents). The bus crews are much more concerned about collecting fares than with their passengers' safety, let alone their comfort. Many of the city's traffic accidents involve buses.

Bus companies have complained that the fees are too low to cover maintenance costs, while drivers fret and complain about the illegal levies imposed on them at terminals by both officials and hoodlums. Unfortunately, fully subsidizing the public transit system seems to be out of the question because the city administration cannot bear the expense.

As it is now, perhaps the most distressing aspect of the current transit system is that it exacerbates the existing social gap. In the last few decades, hundreds of thousands of privately owned vehicles belonging to those who can afford to abandon the transit system for greater comfort and convenience have begun to fill the city's streets, while those who can barely afford bus fare, let alone purchase even a motorcycle, are left to struggle with the buses.

Clearly, several things must be done to counter this trend. One way would be to add to the city's fleet of air conditioned buses and see to it that load limits are strictly adhered to by bus crews. Another would be to allow demand for this type of bus to dictate fares with a feasible level of subsidizing on the part of the government so that people dependent on the transit system would not have to bear the brunt of the increased cost.

This, of course, would not be the ideal solution, but at least it might help solve part of the problem. We believe that many people will be willing to pay the higher fare as long as good service is maintained.