Busway project glosses over land woes
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The city administration is sticking to its plan to simultaneously build new busway corridors from the Pulo Gebang bus terminal, currently under-construction in East Jakarta, to Kalideres, West Jakarta, even though land acquisition remains a problem.
"We have to go on with the construction work while negotiations continue regarding the aquasition of plots of land on Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan," City Public Works Agency head Fodly Misbach said.
The administration plans to acquire around 42,000 square meters of land on the north side of Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan from Mediros Hospital to the Pulogadung bus terminal. The land is needed to widen the street to 50 meters from the existing average of 22 meters. The 50-meter wide road is needed to give room for the busway lane, busway shelters and lanes for other vehicles.
The administration has proposed allocating Rp 90 billion (US$10 million) in funds in its 2005 budget to compensate land owners. The compensation being offered is between Rp 1 million and Rp 1.5 million per square meter.
The busway corridor construction will be handled by several different agencies, namely the public works agency for road infrastructure, transportation agency for the construction of busway shelters and the parks agency to relocate trees in the median strips.
"The procurement of the buses will be in the hands of those private companies that have expressed interest in taking part in the operation of the new busway project," said City Secretary Ritola Tasmaya.
The private companies, he said, were bus operators whose routes were scrapped due to the busway operation. They are Steady Safe, Mayasari Bhakti, Arief Rahman Hakim (ARH) and state-run bus operator PPD, whose 200 buses together ply the routes to be taken over by the busway.
"I have received information from the transportation agency that the operators have agreed to take part in the project, considering that the new busway project is prospective for their business," Ritola said.
"We have finished the planning stage. We are now proceeding with the busway implementation. Hopefully, the new project will be on schedule."
The Pulo Gebang-Kalideres route will be divided into two, passing the National Monument (Monas). The first route, Pulo Gebang-Monas, will be operational in June while the other will start in October.
The Jakarta Post observed that the administration started lane divider construction for the Pulo Gebang-Monas corridor in early November. It cut down dozens of trees in the median strips on Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan and Jl. Suprapto.
Parks Agency data says that there are at least 1,610 trees along Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan while Jl. Suprapto has 564 trees. However, there is no information available on the number of trees that will be cut down to make way for the project.
The Parks Agency has promised to replace each tree cut down with 10 new trees.
As for the Monas-Kalideres route, so far there has been no construction work.
An official with the West Jakarta Transportation Office, Theodorus Marbun, said the busway lane divider construction would also affect at least seven kilometers of median strip on Jl. Daan Mogot.
"We will cut both sides of the median strip by 3.4 meters to make way for the busway lanes," he said.