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.