City to accept advise on busway
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Jakarta administration said it would use suggestions offered by experts from the New York-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) to improve the busway service.
"We take the suggestions they gave us seriously ... some will be applied to our new busway corridors," Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo said over the weekend.
He said extra doors would be added to the buses and shelters of the busway in order to cut down on the boarding time and the buses' stopping time.
Fauzi said the busway operator also would begin the trial run of an articulated bus on the Blok M-Kota busway corridor as part of efforts to boost the capacity of the system.
"An articulated bus is ready and the TransJakarta busway management is preparing a test run," he said.
He said the administration realized articulated buses were needed in order to accommodate more passengers on future busway corridors.
Adding second doors to every bus and shelter along the busway corridors and operating articulated buses were among the recommendations made by the ITDP during a meeting with Fauzi last Wednesday.
According to the ITDP's projections, adding additional doors would significantly shorten the current boarding time of 45 seconds to 22 seconds, in turn increasing the capacity of the buses to 6,000 passengers per hour per direction from the current 2,700 passengers per hour per direction.
The institute, which also provided technical assistance for the TransMilenio busway project in Bogota, Columbia, which Jakarta has tried to emulate, also recommended the use of articulated buses to further increase the capacity of the buses to 9,600 passengers per hour per direction.
ITDP executive director Walter Hook also faulted the city administration's failure to integrate the Senen railway station in Central Jakarta into the busway system, saying that failure would cause the system to lose between 20,000 and 25,000 passengers per day.
Commenting on the criticism, Fauzi said the administration would integrate the railway station into the busway system after it finished renovating the Senen area.
The administration plans to complete construction this year of two new busway corridors connecting Pulogadung in East Jakarta and Harmoni in Central Jakarta, and Harmoni and Kalideres in West Jakarta.
The administration began operating the first busway route in January last year, connecting Blok M in South Jakarta with Kota in West Jakarta.
City Transportation Agency head Rustam Effendy Sidabutar said the administration would complete the new busway routes by the end of December.
"At least 29 public bus routes with 302 buses will be affected by the new busway routes," Rustam said.
He said buses whose routes overlapped the busway corridors by at least 50 percent would be scrapped, but the operators would be given the opportunity to join the consortium operating the new corridors or to move their armada to other routes.
New Busway Corridors
Pulogadung-Harmoni Kalideres-Harmoni
Length 18 kilometers 15 kilometers
Shelters 46 shelters 22 shelters
Pedestrian Bridges 26 bridges 18 bridges
Buses 107 buses 80 buses
Source: City Transportation Agency