Filling a need

Filling a need

As the millions of Jakartans who cannot afford the luxury of
owning a car or motorbike well know, much is left to be desired
about this city's public transportation system. Except for the
few RMB air conditioned buses which are operated by the PPD city
transit company, city buses and minibuses are overcrowded to the
point that they endanger their passengers and other road users
alike. In addition, they ply only the main roads and offer
irregular and singularly bad service.

Although they are uncomfortable and noisy and despite the fact
that they pollute the air with their thick, biting exhaust gases,
the small three-wheeled scooter taxis known as bajaj are useful
for short trips. Their range of operation, however, is limited by
law and their numbers are far from adequate. Taxis are available,
of course, and some of them are considered quite good, but for
hundreds of thousands of Jakartans they are not affordable.
Besides that, many taxi drivers refuse to carry passengers on
short hauls, although this is supposed to be against their
company's rules.

It was because of all this that the modest pedicab, the
bicycle taxi known as becak, enjoyed such a wide popularity
during the many years that it was allowed to operate in this
city. Those vehicles were completely noiseless and non-polluting
and they could reach every corner of any neighborhood without
difficulty. They were the favored means of short-haul
transportation for millions of Jakartans.

Then, in 1989, the becak were banned. City officials ruled
that it was "inhumane" to allow a person to pedal another one to
his or her destination, and thus the pedicab was banned. Critics
of the ban argued that it was even more inhumane to deprive
thousands of people of their honest earning and perhaps force
them to resort to crime in order to survive. Whatever the truth,
the officials had their way and Jakarta has been without becak
for more than five years.

No one knows whether, or to what extent, the authorities have
in the meantime been able to fulfill their promise to find other
means of employment for the jobless pedicab drivers. What is
unmistakable is that the city authorities have not made good
their promise to the Jakarta citizenry to find another adequate
means of transportation to replace the becak. For five years the
small but pressing void in the city's public transportation
system was left unattended to.

Under the circumstances one should not be at all surprised
that a number of enterprising young men with motorbikes have
taken the initiative to fill that void by making good use of
their vehicles and transporting passengers for a fee. As far as
the public is concerned, a real need is thus satisfied. And a
source of extra income is secured for the owners/drivers of the
motorbikes. And because all of this is in accordance with the
universally recognized law of supply and demand, it is once again
not surprising that those motorcycle-taxis, which are known as
ojek, have since considerably increased in number.

Now comes the news that the ojek are to be banned on the
grounds that they are "not provided for in the law". Legal and
humanitarian arguments aside, the question is, what will such a
ban actually achieve? We believe that unless there is a clear and
feasible concept that accommodates all the existing needs, to ban
the ojek at this stage will simply be to repeat the becak
experience. The need for short-distance transportation will
remain and, in time, some new means, with its own ensuing
problems, will emerge.