'Desperate effort to make up for past failures'

'Desperate effort to make up for past failures'
OR
'Mismanagement would only add to problem'
OR
'Current bus routes should be enough'

The city administration will start the construction of a monorail
and expand the busway system in June. However, there are doubts
that these costly projects will be enough to ease the capital's
traffic problems. The Jakarta Post asked some residents for their
opinion on the matter.

Ameng, 30, a lawyer who lives in Tebet, South Jakarta, and
works in Central Jakarta:

I'm not really affected by the transportation projects because
most of the time I take an ojek (motorcycle taxi).

However, I support the city administration's intention to ease
traffic congestion by developing the busway. But the busway
cannot stand by itself. It needs to be supported by other traffic
policies to reduce the number of private cars traversing the
city's roads. For example, by increasing road tax for older cars.

As for the construction of the busway corridor, if there is a
need to clear some land, the administration must be consistent.
Don't evict only the poor. If necessary, they must have the power
to evict, for example, office buildings on main roads.

Herjuno Wahyu, 28, is a freelance website developer. He is
from Klaten, Central Java, but currently lives with friends in
Tebet, Central Jakarta:

I see all these transportation projects -- the busway, the
subway, the monorail, you name it -- as a desperate effort by the
city administration to make up for its past failures to provide a
good transportation system for its citizens.

The city's public transportation routes, for example, should
be more than enough to serve the public's needs, but due to some
mismanagement along the way, have become one of the main causes
of the city's traffic problems.

Jakarta also has a very basic railway network that could have
been developed into a sophisticated rail system like in any other
modern city, but th administration has somehow failed to do so.

The busway and the monorail, in this case, are breakthroughs
that will hopefully become a panacea for the situation.

The main problem now is how to ensure that these projects are
well-planned and integrated, and are not plagued with
mismanagement like other projects.

If they are, then we can forget all about the goals of solving
the city's traffic problems, reducing pollution and so forth.
They will just simply add to these problems.

--The Jakarta Post