British company offers traffic jam solution

British company offers traffic jam solution

JAKARTA (JP): Peek Traffic, a subsidiary of a British
transportation firm Peek Plc., has offered the capital an urban
traffic control system to reduce congestion by 30 percent.

Peek Traffic's managing director, Anthony Howard Gould, said
yesterday that his company planned to open an office in Jakarta
in the second half of this year to prepare a feasibility study
for the project.

"We talked with Bappenas, the governor and minister of
transportation about the traffic problems in Jakarta. We have
learnt that there is a business study underway to investigate the
best way to resolve the traffic problem in Jakarta and we have
the technology to facilitate it," Gould said. He was referring
to Peek's 'Scoot' traffic control system.

"Scoot is installed in 130 cities around the world. The
system, developed by the British government since the early
1980's, is considered the leading technology for urban traffic
control in the world now," he said.

He said that his company would submit a proposal to the
Ministry of Transportation and the City Hall. "We hope the
British government will help us provide funding support for the
proposal."

"If we were awarded the contract, we could start the project
in Jakarta by the end of 1997," he said.

Gould said that his company currently holds a contract to
supply an area traffic control system in Bangkok which has a
total of 350 intersections.

"The sizes of Bangkok and Jakarta and their traffic congestion
problems are almost similar," he said, adding that the traffic
control project in Bangkok is worth about 800 million baht
(approximately US$75 million).

Gould was here accompanying British Secretary of State for
Transport, Sir George Young, who was in Indonesia for three days.
During his visit which ended yesterday, Young, leading a
delegation of 19 businessmen, met with Minister of Transportation
Haryanto Dhanutirto, Minister of National Development
Planning/Chairman of the national Development Planning Board
(Bappenas) Ginandjar Kartasasmita, Jakarta Governor Surjadi
Soedirdja and top executives of the Bukaka and the Bakrie groups.

Peek, set up 25 years ago in Henley, has offices in Bangkok,
Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and has a join venture in Sichuan of
China.

Peek has two main operating arms, traffic operation and
measurement equipment.

The traffic operation section comprises of suppliers of urban
traffic control systems, traffic signal controllers, motorway and
expressway control and surveillance systems, vehicle detection,
route guidance systems, vehicle counters and classifier and
weigh-in-motion and enforcement systems.

The latter party produces specialized instruments to measure
and monitor flow. level, density and pressure as well as being
suppliers of rugged portable data systems.

"The system will reduce congestion and speed up journey times
across the city, so people can expect between 20 percent and 30
percent faster journey times.

"The World Bank revealed last year that 500 to 2,000 people
died in cities like Bangkok because of traffic pollution. It's an
extremely major problem and I don't see any reason why that
number would be different in Jakarta," Gould said.

The capital currently has a computerized area traffic control
system regulating the changing of traffic lights at 110 of its
468 intersections to help curb traffic congestion.

The Spanish-made devices installed at the intersections send
in data on the number of vehicles passing.

The system equipped with cameras which record the traffic flow
situation at certain locations and a traffic system center at
City Hall with six monitors to display the pictures sent in by
the cameras. The system cost $10 million, with most of the money
coming from a soft loan from the Spanish government.

Official data show that there were more than 2.88 million
vehicles in the city by the end of last year

The growth rate of vehicles in Jakarta is 14 percent per
annum, while the length of road increases by just 4 percent per
annum. (icn)