City administration offers investors six inner-city toll road projects
Rendi A. Witular and Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The addition of an estimated 267 new cars a day to Jakarta's 7,634 kilometer-long web of city streets has prompted the government to approve the city administration's proposal to build six inner-city toll roads worth Rp 23 trillion (US$2.25 billion) to overcome the already-congested traffic in the capital.
The 85.28-km total projects will be offered to potential investors later this year and a seven-stage construction is slated to start mid-2006. The projects, which would cost Rp 270 billion a kilometer per road section, are expected to complete by end of 2008.
"The projects are part of our efforts to ease congestion in the capital," Minister of Public Works Djoko Kirmanto said on Monday after meeting Vice President Jusuf Kalla.
Kalla's approval clears the way for the government to declare the planned toll roads, proposed by the city administration as part of the national highway network. A joint team, tasked with preparing the bidding process, will be set up soon.
With a more than 10 million population, Jakarta is facing total gridlock by 2014 should there be no significant measures to handle already chronic traffic congestion.
Governor Sutiyoso called on private, state and city companies to join in the bidding for the projects.
"In the tender, we will decide which companies will serve as the developers and operators," he said at City Hall after the meeting.
Sutiyoso ensured prospective investors that they would not face problems such as land acquisition for the construction since it would be built on a two-tier construction system, which required less space.
However, state toll road operator PT Jasa Marga president director Syarifuddin Alambai highlighted the coordination with other state firms as the main obstacle in the construction of the projects.
He pointed out that work with Jasa Marga, state telecommunication company PT Telkom and state power utility PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) were needed to ensure that the construction would not damage their underground telephone and power networks.
"The coordination would take some," he said, adding that Jasa Marga would also bid for the project by forming a joint-venture company with potential investors.
The project's construction plan has already received strong opposition from transportation observers. They said the planned roads would only encourage more people to drive into the city and would worsen traffic in the city center, particularly at toll road exit and entry points.
"It will be like injecting a flood of traffic into the heart of the city," Bambang Susantono of the Indonesia Transportation Society (MTI) said.
Observers have repeatedly called the city administration to improve the poor public transportation services. Jakarta already launched its busway service, which is quite successful, but other routes have yet to follow nearly two years after the first one was introduced on Jan. 15 last year.