'Buses should only stop at bus stops'

'Buses should only stop at bus stops'

The Jakarta administration plans to construct a monorail and
expand the busway system, yet it still has not completed an
evaluation of the four-month-old Blok M to Kota busway route.
Another thing the administration has not done is work up a grand
design for the transportation system in the capital. The Jakarta
Post talked to residents about the issue.

Matthew, 30, is an Australian who works in the business
district in Central Jakarta. He has worked in Indonesia for two
years and lives in Karet, Central Jakarta:

Private vehicle owners in Jakarta should be made to pay a tax
for the congestion they cause in the city. It should be used to
subsidize the construction of public transportation, because it
is in the interest of everybody to get people to travel around
easily.

There should be a designated bus lane on artery roads in
Jakarta. It need not have a concrete lane divider. A line painted
on the roads should be enough and the police should ticket
vehicles other than buses that use the lane.

The priorities should be upgrading buses and making designated
bus lanes. The police should get the buses to not stop anywhere
but at bus stops. That way, we can speed up public
transportation.

A monorail is not a good idea because it is so expensive. We
don't want to make public transportation for those who can
already afford to have private vehicles.

Hotma Roni Simamora, 30, is a freelance photographer. He lives
in Rawamangun, East Jakarta, with his mother and sisters:

Does the Jakarta administration have a master plan for
transportation? It did not seem so in the past. For example, the
underpass on Jl. Pramuka in East Jakarta, which I pass
frequently, simply moves the bottleneck to another place.

What I read in the newspaper suggested that the busway in
Bogota, where we got the idea from, is very different from the
one we have here. Therefore, I am not confident that the busway
will prove to be effective.

Transportation problems in Jakarta are too complex and have
many aspects. And, as usual, we only solve one problem by
creating another one in the process.

--The Jakarta Post