City to clear alternative roads

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta Police and the city administration will start clearing the four alternative roads along the busway corridor from Blok M in South Jakarta to Kota in West Jakarta on Friday to help ease traffic congestion.

Jakarta Police traffic division chief Sr. Comr. Sulistyo Ishak said on Thursday that a joint task force would be deployed to clear the roads of illegally parked cars, street vendors, street hawkers and reckless pedestrians.

The task force will comprise 250 traffic police, 250 officers from the City Transportation Agency and 500 public order officers.

"We want to put back order along the alternative roads to provide more lanes for motorists," Sulistyo said.

On the first day of the clearing, the task force will distribute brochures informing people along the roads of the regulations.

Sulistyo said there had been many traffic violations -- street vendors, motorists parking their vehicles on the streets, public buses not stopping at the bus stops and pedestrians not using the pedestrian bridges -- along the alternative roads that caused chronic traffic woes.

"That's why we target them in the first place," he said.

As the busway project will kick off on Jan. 15, the joint task force will take sterner measures, including ticketing.

Sulistyo said the traffic along the alternative roads would be worse once the busway was implemented because many motorists would avoid the busway corridors.

The busway will take the right of the fast lane, leaving less lanes for private vehicles.

Sulistyo, however, said the congestion along the busway lane would be eased as 149 buses serving seven routes passing the corridor would be rerouted once the project started.

The administration has announced that a total of 56 air- conditioned buses would start operating to transport all the 60,000 commuters along the corridor.

Each passenger will be charged Rp 2,500 (29 U.S. cents) per trip along the Blok M-Kota route. The buses will operate from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. but it will be free for the first two weeks.

To ease traffic congestion, the city will also extend and expand the three-in-one traffic policy, in which a car on the busway corridor must have at least three passengers from 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Friday.