Busway a flawed policy?

While some other countries adopt the paradigm that transportation is a human right, Indonesia has yet to find the best formula to provide its citizens with humane transportation, especially ground transportation in the big cities.

This inability to provide appropriate ground transportation is clearly observable in the streets of Jakarta, the capital of the republic. Day-to-day traffic congestion and never-ending traffic violations have obviously caused the administration, including the law enforcers, to become frustrated.

The fruits of their frustration are -- among other things -- total ignorance of the city's day-to-day traffic woes and inappropriate moves, such as the decision to adopt a busway system, which is adapted from Bogota, Colombia.

The idea to establish the busway system results from a beautiful dream to cure Jakarta of its traffic headaches. Unfortunately, the realization of the idea started with controversy. Many trees have been felled to make way for the busway lanes and stations.

As a result the traffic flow between Blok M (South Jakarta) and Kota (downtown) have been growing much more hectic than before as about one-third of the roads along the route are being turned into special lanes for the new buses. Already, the lane's concrete separators have caused accidents.

True, every citizen plays a part in causing the traffic chaos, but it is the provincial administration led by the governor that is the most responsible for delineate policies to put things in order.

Considering that the roads have become even more chaotic after part of them have been taken for the new bus lanes, Jakarta's citizens are justifiably pessimistic that the busway will be able to cure the city's traffic headaches.

However, Governor Sutiyoso is very upbeat about the success of the busway system. All-out preparations have been made to validate his persistence. A total of 149 buses plying the Blok M- Kota; Lebak Bulus-Kota and Ciputat-Kota routes have to give up their operations for the sake of the busway scheme.

The city will also extend and expand the three-in-one traffic policy, in which a car on the busway corridor must have at least three passengers from 6:30 to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., from Monday to Friday. This plan has evoked protests from the public whom dub the move ridiculous.

The busway policy is supposed to encourage people to use public transportation to and from their places of work. This, however, sounds as if the governor is being too optimistic about the project's efficacy, as the administration seems to ignore the fact that the preference of citizens to use private cars -- which is one of the main causes of the chaos on the roads -- is triggered by the unsafe and uncomfortable public means of transportation.

The worsening traffic flow that is caused by the initial work on the busway project is, according to Sutiyoso, understandable as the busway is a new mode of transportation in Jakarta. "That also happened in Bogota," he was quoted by reporters as saying.

But while Sutiyoso -- and, of course, his superiors -- radiate optimism, skepticism runs strong among the public, which believes that the busway is not the appropriate mode of transportation for Jakarta under its present circumstances.

Many people are doubtful that the new buses operated under the busway system can reach their destination faster than regular buses operating under the old system.

The habit of motorists and pedestrians, plus the condition of the city traffic circles in general, is likely to become a very serious obstacle for the buses to reach their destination according to their schedules.

It seems that any kind of mode of transportation won't work to curb the chaos of Jakarta's traffic, disorganized as it is by the lack of discipline of thousands of motorists and pedestrians.

The capital city indeed needs an integrated mode of transportation that takes into account the needs of residential areas based on the city master plan. What we have now is a disrupted system. There is no clear link between the residential modes of transportation -- such as ojek bicycle taxies -- and areas linked by other means of transportation such as mikrolet minibuses and other areas with still larger modes of transportation.

The mayoralties apparently focus their interest on only their own areas of jurisdiction when issuing operation permits for transit vehicles. In addition, the city administration has failed to cooperate with Jakarta's neighboring provinces of Banten and West Java when developing the ground transportation network.

It is of course clear that what a teeming city like Jakarta needs is a means for safe and comfortable mass rapid transit (MRT), which, unfortunately remains a dream.

Many of Jakarta's citizens doubt that the busway can make a successful contribution to cure Jakarta of its traffic woes. After all, one city administration official has conceded that the busway is not meant to function as an MRT.

But if the public's doubts are substantiated, our bet is that people will merely say that the busway was a policy that was flawed from the start. And the citizenry will have to live with who knows how many more years of danger on the roads.