City extends, expands three-in-one traffic policy

City extends, expands three-in-one traffic policy

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Objections from motorists to the Jakarta Administration's plan to
extend the three-in-one traffic policy apparently did not deter
the bureaucrats from continuing their plan and even expanding it.

City secretary for development affairs Irzal Djamal, who is
also head of the busway project team, told The Jakarta Post on
Wednesday that the policy would be enforced to support the
launching of 60 buses in the Bus Rapid Transit or busway project
in January.

The three-in-one policy requires that vehicles must have at
least three passengers while driving along Jl. Jend. Sudirman and
Jl. M.H. Thamrin from 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., Monday to Friday.

The new policy will be enforced all along the 12.9-kilometer
busway corridor from Blok M in South Jakarta to Kota in West
Jakarta from 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and also from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Irzal said that he was preparing a gubernatorial decree, which
would become the legal basis for the extended policy.

Since being launched in 1993, the policy failed to reduce
congestion along the main thoroughfares as motorists simply began
hiring joki (people posing as passengers for hundreds meters as
they passed the single checkpoint) for a small fee.

Irzal said that motorists would not be able to hire joki as
the three-in-one policy would be effective for the length of the
roads as opposed to just at the entrances as it is now. He
estimated that the new policy could reduce the number of private
cars along the well-traveled roads by up to 30 percent.

Separately, Director-General of Land Transportation at the
Ministry of Communications, Iskandar Abubakar, still estimated
that severe congestion would occur along the roads from Blok M to
Kota once the busway became operational.

"The severe congestion is unavoidable as one lane of the road
will be used for the busway. Many private car owners are still
using their vehicles and still reluctant to take buses, even the
new busway," he told the Post after speaking at a seminar on the
Jakarta macro-transportation model.

Iskandar said that the busway would only be effective if
private car users opted for the busway when commuting.

Irzal admitted that the busway system was not yet ready to
transport all 60,000 commuters along the Blok M-Kota route as its
60 buses could only accommodate some 20,000 commuters per day.

Tickets for the busway have been ordered from Colombia which
has been successful in implementing a similar busway in its
capital Bogota.

"The tickets will be ready in January when the busway is
ready. The ticket fee is not fixed yet but we estimate it should
cost Rp 2,500 (29 U.S. cents) per trip," he said. The ticket is
cheaper than other air-conditioned buses, which are currently Rp
3,500.

Irzal also mentioned two other alternatives that would be
applied if the busway operation was not effective enough to
reduce the traffic.

The first possibility is the alternate license plate program,
which only allows vehicles with certain plate numbers to operate
on certain days.

For example, cars with plate numbers ending with 1 or 2 are
allowed to operate on the designated roads on Mondays.

The second alternative is implementing electronic road pricing
on certain roads near the busway corridors.

Irzal said that his team was still studying this system,
saying that such a system had worked well in Singapore and could
also be applied in Jakarta.