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