Double track railway opens in West Java

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto yesterday opened a 32.4 kilometer double-track railway connecting Kadokan Gabus and Haurgeulis in West Java.

The railway is part of a planned 105.74 kilometer double-track railway which, when completed in 1998, will connect Cikampek and Cirebon in West Java.

Haryanto said each kilometer of the railway cost about Rp 1 billion (US$434,782), meaning it would cost Rp 105 billion to build the whole railway.

Soemino Eko Saputro, the president of state-owned railway company Perum Kereta Api (Perumka), said that trains serving the north Java line were often delayed at the Kadokan Gabus- Haurgeulis section, which had been connected by a single-track railway.

The section, he said, had caused a bottleneck because trains from Jakarta and Cikampek in the West, from Semarang and Cirebon in the East and from Purwokerto in the South would often arrive there at the same time.

He said the double-track railway would increase the capacity of trains traveling along the line by 200 percent, up from 84 trips a day to 166 trips a day.

The new railway would let trains run faster, up from 85 kilometers an hour to 120 km an hour, he said.

Soemino announced yesterday that Perumka was planning to launch the second generation of the Argo Bromo express train on National Transportation Day on Sep. 17.

"The second generation will be faster than the first, which now serves the Jakarta-Surabaya route in eight hours. It will also have better facilities and greater comfort," he was quoted by Antara as saying.

He said the new Argo Bromo train would use bolster-less coaches from France. Perumka had already ordered 30 executive coaches and 10 backups.

The opening was marked by the handing over of the railway's management from Santo Budiono, the Ministry of Transportation's director general of land transportation, to Perumka's president Soemino. (pwn)