Busway feeder to use Japanese buses
Busway feeder to use Japanese buses
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Jakarta bus operators proposed on Thursday that the city
administration use imported secondhand buses from Japan to help
improve existing busway feeder services.
"We cannot afford new buses of the same quality as the busway.
But, we can replace the existing buses with better ones," said
Aip Syarifuddin of Jakarta chapter of Organization of Land
Transportation Owners (Organda).
Organda have prepared around 300 secondhand buses to provide
feeder service for the 12.9 kilometer busway corridor from Blok M
in South Jakarta to Kota in West Jakarta.
"Those buses will connect several points along the corridor,
like the Semanggi cloverleaf, Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, and
Harmoni intersections, to other areas across the city," Aip said
on the sidelines of a seminar titled: In search of plan for
busway feeder services.
The TransJakarta Busway Management had terminated the
contracts of two busway feeder system operators, namely Kopami
Jaya and PT Metromini, due to their failure to comply with
regulations.
The management said passengers had complained that bus
conductors on the feeder buses refused to accept feeder bus
tickets and instead demanded cash.
With the contract termination, only six operators have been
providing feeder services since Feb. 1. They are PPD, Steady
Safe, Kopaja, Bianglala, Pahala Kencana and Mayasari Bhakti.
Data from the management shows the 383 non air-conditioned
feeder buses owned by the eight operators accommodate only a few
hundred passengers a day, far from the average number of busway
passengers of about 62,000 per day.
Governor Sutiyoso even asserted that the feeder buses should
be as comfortable as the busway. "At least, the buses should be
air-conditioned".
Aside from the first busway corridor, the administration also
plans new busway corridors from Pulo Gebang in East Jakarta, to
Kalideres in West Jakarta, via the National Monument Park
(Monas).
The Pulo Gebang-Monas corridor is slated to be operational
next June, while the Monas-Kalideres route in October 2005.