Busway consortium to be paid by the km
Busway consortium to be paid by the km
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The busway consortium -- comprising of three private bus
operators and two city-owned transportation firms -- will receive
a fee from operating the busway calculated on every kilometer the
buses travel, rather than the number of busway passengers.
"Members of the consortium will receive between Rp 7,000 (82
U.S. cents) and Rp 8,000 for every kilometer that each bus
travels," said busway management team head Irzal Djamal on
Thursday, after a ceremony attended by 2,098 personnel from the
busway task force at the National Monument (Monas) Park, Central
Jakarta.
The five members of the consortium are private firms
Bianglala, Steady Safe, and Pahala Kencana; city-owned bus firm
PPD, and transportation firm Ratax. The consortium members were
all operators of buses plying similar routes to busway's except
Ratax.
Although Governor Sutiyoso modeled much of the busway system
on the TransMilenio project in Colombia's capital city Bogota,
the initiation of the busway here is vastly different.
In Bogota, bus operators bid against one another for
involvement in the TransMilenio project. The operators also
prepare, operate and maintain the buses and train the bus drivers
and crews.
Irzal said that the method of calculation would influence the
decision to extend the bus headway. The headway is the period of
time between an arriving bus and the next arriving bus, or, an
indication of the period of time a passenger must wait for the
next bus.
During peak hours, the headway will hover at 90 seconds for
each of the 40 operating buses for the busway project.
"If the number of passengers is low and the buses are vacant,
we will reduce the number of operating buses and park others at
three designated places in Kebon Melati and IRTI parking lot in
Monas, both in Central Jakarta, and Lebak Bulus, South Jakarta,"
Irzal said.
Thus, passengers would wait even longer to board buses during
off-peak hours.
Governor Sutiyoso said at the ceremony that the city must
carry through with the project because "we have experienced more
than 30 years without reliable and comfortable public
transportation".
The busway -- that will serve the 12.9-kilometer corridor from
Blok M, South Jakarta, to Kota, West Jakarta -- will kick off on
Jan. 15, after being delayed three times.
Each passenger must pay Rp 2,500 for a one-way ticket. Prepaid
tickets in the form of magnetic cards will be available for
frequent users of busway. To reach Blok M or the nearest bus
shelter, passengers can take one of 165 feeder buses from 16
locations.
Tickets for the bus feeders for the inner city zone will cost
Rp 2,900, while for the outer city zone bus feeder tickets will
cost Rp 3,800. Passengers connecting from bus feeders will not
have to buy an additional ticket to travel on the busway, but
simply exchange their feeder ticket for a busway ticket.