City prepares for new bus routes

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The City Transportation Agency plans to forge ahead with more bus route changes, despite the confusion and anger among passengers and drivers caused by the first rerouting this week.

Agency head Rustam Effendy Sidabutar said there would be more modifications to bus routes feeding the Blok M, South Jakarta- Kota and West Jakarta busway corridors next month.

"The second round of rerouting will affect 106 buses. We will carry out more changes next month," Rustam said.

The agency earlier rerouted 12 buses along the 12.9-kilometer busway corridor on Wednesday in order to synchronize them with the busway.

Drivers complained the change had resulted in a sudden drop in the number of passengers, while many passengers were angered at the higher prices they had to pay on the more expensive busway. After a protest meeting on Wednesday many bus drivers were seen driving on their old routes, despite warnings from the agency that their companies would be investigated and shut down for route infringements.

Rustam would not go into detail about the next lot of changes, saying only that those routes which ran parallel with the busway for more than 50 percent of the distance would be rerouted.

Among buses plying routes parallel with the busway are Mayasari Bakti's air-conditioned Patas 70 buses serving Kampung Rambutan to Tanah Abang, Patas 52 buses from Bekasi to Tanah Abang and non-air-conditioned Patas 16 buses, from Kampung Rambutan to Tanah Abang.

On Wednesday, the agency rerouted 131 buses on 12 routes that ran alongside the busway for more than 70 percent of the distance. Bus routes overlapping by 80 percent to 100 percent were scrapped when the busway corridor was introduced in January last year.

The administration has no plan so far to adjust other routes, saying such changes would have insignificant benefits.

The adjustments were made after requests from bus operators, who have complained about a sharp decline in their number of passengers due since the busway started in January last year.

However, drivers and passengers were still confused about the new route changes this week.

"Passengers demanded us to return their money as they thought that we had dropped them along the middle of the route," said Runggu Siahaan, a driver from PPD's air-conditioned Patas 10 Kampung Rambutan-Kota bus.

Arif, also a Patas 10 driver, said the changes had caused ticket sales to drop by about 75 percent.

"Most of our passengers are heading to offices along Jl. Jend. Sudirman and Jl. MH Thamrin ... But the agency is only allowing us to drop passengers in Senayan, Central Jakarta. Of course, none of them will use our buses," he said.

Land Transportation Owners Association (Organda) Jakarta chairman Herry Rotty said all bus operators had been informed about the route changes and he did not know of any objections at this time.

"I think the objections are only coming from the bus crews. We will let the respective bus operators solve their internal problems," he said.