Four new busway corridors to be built next year
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The city administration has proposed the construction of four new busway corridors in next year's Rp 13.83 trillion (US$1.49 billion) budget to help ease chronic traffic congestion in the capital.
The budget draft reveals that the City Transportation Agency will build the fourth corridor stretching from Kebon Jeruk in West Jakarta to Pasar Baru in Central Jakarta and the fifth corridor is under-construction from Pulo Gebang bus terminal in East Jakarta to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle.
For both infrastructure constructions, the agency has allocated Rp 1.6 billion and Rp 1.9 billion respectively.
The budget will also cover the costs of traffic management and engineering the fourth and fifth busway routes, in which each will allocated Rp 1 billion.
Routes for the sixth and seventh corridors were not available but the agency has allocated Rp 3.1 billion and Rp 1.4 billion respectively, for the two routes.
"We will start preparations on the new busway routes next year and we will do it simultaneously with the construction of the second and third corridors. We hope the latter can start operations by mid 2006," the transportation agency head Rustam Effendi Sidabutar said on Monday.
The administration is currently constructing the second corridor from Pulogadung bus terminal in East Jakarta to the National Monument (Monas), Central Jakarta, and the third is from Monas to Kalideres, West Jakarta.
The agency has also proposed Rp 3.6 billion for monitoring and controlling the busway operations and Rp 800 million for the preparation of information technology-based busway project master plan.
Councillors had criticized city agencies for their failure in coordinating and arranging a comprehensive budget for the busway project.
"That simply reflects the lingering practice of duplication in drafting the city budget and therefore makes it prone to irregularities," said councillor Dani Anwar of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) faction.
Next year, the administration will also continue to improve the existing busway corridor from Blok M in South Jakarta to Kota in West Jakarta by allocating Rp 23 billion for the construction of a pedestrian tunnel in Kota and Rp 6 billion for "the upgrading of the busway infrastructure".