City to construct inner city toll roads next March

City to construct inner city toll roads next March

Damar Harsanto
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Good news for those who now spend hours behind the wheel,
desperately waiting for a respite from chronic traffic
congestion: the Jakarta administration will soon start
constructing six inner-city toll roads in March next year.

"We are preparing concrete measures to follow up the plan (to
develop the toll roads), including consulting with the central
government about prevailing regulations and coordinating with
relevant government institutions about the project," Jakarta
Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo said at City Hall after a meeting with
city-owned developer Jakarta Propertindo.

Fauzi asserted that the development of a total 85-kilometer
toll roads was in line with the macro transportation master plan,
which has become the main reference in any transportation
projects in the capital.

"The corridor linking Jl. Kramat Raya, Jl. Salemba and Jl.
Matraman Raya and another corridor from Bekasi to Cawang in East
Jakarta are among corridors which we will prioritize in the
project since we all witness the most chronic traffic jams there
every day," he said.

City Public Works Agency head Fodly Misbach said that the
project would cost more than Rp 23 trillion (US$2.5 billion), or
Rp 270 billion per kilometer per road section.

"The development project will last four to five years and the
entire project will be wholly funded by private investors," Fodly
said.

Fodly was confident the project would easily attract investors
because it promised an internal rate of return (IRR) of 17.5
percent per annum.

Currently, bank interest charged on infrastructure project
borrowing ranges from 12 percent to 17 percent.

Jakarta Propertindo will become the main developer in the
project which will use mostly elevated roads.

The administration has warned that the traffic jams in the
capital's streets would end up in complete gridlock by 2014
should there be no significant measures immediately taken to
solve the traffic headache.

Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso has blamed an average annual 8
percent growth of car ownership inundating the already
overcrowded city roads with more cars as the cause of the
worsening traffic, but his administration has done little to curb
the soaring growth of cars here.

Currently, Jakarta's streets, reaching a total of 7,576
kilometers in length, must accommodate 4.7 million vehicles, not
to mention intercity vehicles also using inner-city roads.

Similarly, the latest study on the integrated transportation
for Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi (SITRAMP) made by
the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) shows that the
economic loss caused by the congestion now amounts to Rp 5.5
trillion annually.

The survey also says that cumulative economic losses up to
2020 are estimated to reach Rp 70.3 trillion, or almost 12 times
higher than today's economic losses, if no significant efforts
are made to resolve the chronic transportation problems.