Economic considerations outweigh safety on trains

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

An unidentified body was laid down on the floor of Serpong railway station recently. The body, only covered by newspapers, was there for hours. It was then taken to a hospital in Tangerang after nobody claimed it.

The body is only one of dozens of people who are regularly killed after being electrocuted while sitting on atop trains in the city.

Strangely, such incidents never discourage people from getting on the electric train's roof or other dangerous places on the train. They just ignore notices of danger, which are placed in all train stations in the city. Such disregard is particularly evidenced during rush hour when they literally fight each other for space on the train.

"I am forced to do so. It is already 7 a.m. while I should be at my office by 7.30 a.m. My boss will fire me if I am late," said Harsono, 35, a retail clerk in Central Jakarta.

Harsono, who lives in Serpong, Tangerang, Banten province, was amid hundreds of passengers, who were forced to sit on the roof of a commuter train connecting Rangkas Bitung station in Banten to Kota station in Jakarta on Friday.

During rush hour, train passengers not only try to sit on roofs, many also have to crowd inside and outside of the cabin of locomotive drivers, or even stand on the connectors between the cars.

Sumantri, a resident of Pondok Aren subdistrict in Tangerang, said safety was an unaffordable luxury on commuter trains. He was among the hundreds of people in one car, which has a capacity of around 80 passengers.

"I can understand why they go up on the roofs. They can inhale fresh air there while in here it is very crowded and everyone is sweating," said an employee at a private company on Jl. Sudirman in South Jakarta.

Bianto, an employee of a private company in Slipi, West Jakarta, who lives in Serpong, said during rush hour that passengers were facing the worst condition in terms of comfort and security.

"We cannot even stand on our feet comfortably during that time. It's so crowded that if we fall asleep we won't fall down as other people are tightly pressed against us," he said.

According to him such a situation not only was prone to crimes, such as pickpocketing, but also sexual harassment.

"Can you imagine what happens if, for example, four men stand pressed together with a beautiful young woman?," he said, jokingly.

But Sumantri said he had no choice but to continue using the commuter train as it was the only cheap and relatively fast means of transportation to go to his office. He said that he could take the city bus, but it would take him around two hours while a commuter train was less than an hour.

He said the commuter train was the best transportation available in the city. As an example, people who live in Serpong area, only spend Rp 1,500 to reach Kota station in only one hour 15 minutes.

It is even less expensive if they buy monthly tickets which are only Rp 32,000. While if they take buses, they would spend around Rp 5,000 and take more than two hours.

"I could not imagine if there was no commuter train. It would be awful for me to commute by bus. It does not only take much longer, but its also more expensive and I cannot afford it," said Jusuf, 43, who lives in Muncul subdistrict, Tangerang.

Jusuf, who works as a civil servant on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat in Central Jakarta, said that he could only earn about Rp 1 million per month to support his four children and one wife.

Jusuf, Harsono, and Sumantri expressed the hope that the state owned railway company of PT Kereta Api Indonesia (PT KAI) would improve services so that passengers could travel by trains comfortably.

But their wish seems unlikely to be realized in the near future as, according to PT KAI's President Director Umar Berto, there was no way out to resolve the problem in the near future.

He added that some 450,000 people living in Greater Jakarta use trains as their means of transportation everyday, while PT KAI's capacity was very limited.

"I know that the commuter train users are not satisfied with our services. But I don't know when we can manage to serve them better," Umar told the press recently.