Experts say busway project has failed

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After a full month of the busway's operation, some transportation experts said the project was a failure because of poor planning and unfocused implementation.

An urban transportation expert at the University of Indonesia, Jack Sumabrata, said on Sunday he doubted the busway would be successful because the city administration did not have a well thought out plan or a clear direction for implementing the project.

"Any policies relating to the busway project seem to have no objective, no direction," he told The Jakarta Post by phone on Sunday.

He opposed the administration's plan to add a new fast lane for private cars by scrapping parts of the median strips on Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Thamrin.

"This idea contradicts the original purpose of the busway, which was to encourage Jakartans to switch from private cars to public transportation. It's definitely the wrong move to compromise with the increasingly critical private car owners," Jack said.

He said adding a new fast lane, which will be carried out this year by the city public works and the city parks agencies, would encourage private cars owners to continue using their vehicles.

Instead of constructing a new fast lane for private cars, at a cost of Rp 15 billion (US$1.78 million), Jack suggested the administration use the funds to improve the existing busway infrastructure and feeder bus routes.

Having tried the busway several times, he pointed to damage to the exclusive busway lane. He said the damage resulted because the lane had not been specially designed to handle buses.

Azas Tigor Nainggolan of the Coalition of Residents for Transportation said the busway would fail because of a lack of supporting infrastructure and facilities, including feeder buses and wider sidewalks for pedestrians.

"If the project fails then the people's money will have been squandered. Remember, all the operational costs, even the construction of the infrastructure for the busway, are financed by the city budget," he said.

The administration spent Rp 120.7 billion last year procuring 56 buses and building lane dividers, bus shelters and pedestrian overpasses for the busway. This year, the administration has allocated Rp 120 billion to purchase another 44 buses, build canopies for the pedestrian bridges and construct an underpass in Kota.

Fatimah Sari Nasution of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy warned that the busway would hit serious snags if the administration failed to build passing lanes for the busway.

"Passing lanes at every busway shelter are important to prevent traffic jams along the busway corridor," she was quoted as saying by Antara.

She warned that the busway corridor could become congested when all 140 of the planned buses were fully operational, pointing to the already common sight of long lines of buses in the corridor even though only 56 of the buses are currently in operation.

Governor Sutiyoso has rejected a plan by the TransJakarta Busway Management to construct passing lanes at all busway shelters.