City to clear alternative roads

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.