Better transit service

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.