Blok M - Kota bus lane

Blok M - Kota bus lane

Traffic jams are already getting worse as the city gears up
for the Blok M to Kota Busway. Many, perhaps most, car users
expect (some even hope) that this bold move to improve mobility
in Indonesia's frenetic capital city will end in failure.

But think in a broader context than today's traffic jams used
as an excuse for being forty minutes late for that important
meeting. We will not be alone in doing so. Governor Sutiyoso
and his officials are already hedging their bets with
preparations for more three-in-one regulation and banned
numberplate days.

Given today's transparency we know from the media that the
plan is to open a one-way-each-way busway for exclusive use by 56
new buses. Each bus will have a capacity of 85 passengers with 55
standing, along the 12.9 kilometer 20 stop corridor. The city
government expects that the number of private cars used on the
route will be reduced by 30 percent (The Jakarta Post, Dec. 18).

Fair enough, give up a third of the mixed use roadway to
exclusive bus use and expect about a third less vehicles on the
corridor. But will road users behave as the authorities would
like?

Present users of public transport may well benefit from and
use the busway if the price is not too high. Car users will
mostly resist shifting to low status and comfort bus travel.
Will there be enough who are willing to give up "home to office
and back" travel in favor of "get to the bus station, ride in air
conditioned comfort down the busway and get from the bus station
to final destination", and the same on the way home?

For sure, some spouses will be delighted to deliver their
better halves to the busway and pick them up again at the
ordained hour in exchange for unrestricted use of car and driver
for the rest of the day and improved control over the time their
spouses get home from the office. Others with less accommodating
spouses may curse the lack of parking facilities at the gathering
points.

If not enough car travelers avail themselves of this new
mobility, will the rage of vehicle owners over traffic jams and
more rigorous three-in-one rules plus banned car number days boil
over into abandonment of the initiative before enough time has
elapsed to shift car users in favor of the new travel
alternative?

First, traffic jams have been a feature of Jakarta life at
least as long as the New Order gave a lift to economic growth
back in the seventies. Car ownership has increased many times
since Governor Ali Sadikin took traffic jams management into his
own hands at that time. And many investments in road capacity
have been made including tollways, overpasses and roadway
improvements in response to growing demand for passenger car
transport. How well do the city authorities understand this
process of change in land use under the pressure of traffic jams
and higher door-to-door costs?

Second, to what extent will the dramatic improvement in
telecommunications now taking place, combined with the clustering
of communities around urban commercial centers, induce change in
travel demand that will make super-high density traffic corridors
a relic of the past?

PETER DUNCAN
Cisarua, West Java