IT solutions offered for traffic woes

Benget Simbolon Tnb, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The traffic congestion seems never ending in Jakarta as the number of cars increases much faster than the number of new roads and people become ever more mobile.

Some analysts have even predicted that in five years' time, traveling five kilometers in this sprawling city will take one hour on average. This will, of course, lead to a lot of wasted time and energy, and worsening air pollution.

Can the problems be solved?

To answer the question, the Japanese Highway Industry Development Organization (HIDO). which comes under the auspices of the Japanese Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transportation (MILT), plans to hold a workshop on mobilizing information technology (IT) in order to solve transportation problems here on Friday.

The Japanese ministry, in cooperation with the World Bank, has devised potential solutions for traffic problems in metropolitan cities in Southeast Asia based on the use of information technology.

"The workshop on the application of information technology for better transportation in Jakarta is based on a "probe vehicle" survey conducted by Nippon Koei in 2004," Prof. Haruo Ishida of Tsukuba University in Japan said here on Tuesday.

Ishida, who has developed IT solutions for cities in developing countries, said that participants would discuss the ongoing transportation problems in Jakarta as identified by the survey with a view to finding tentative IT solutions.

The workshop would also touch on potential and advanced systems for road traffic information, bus locations, electronic toll payments, and road control and maintenances.

The IT applications would include providing information on travel times and traffic conditions using information boards, on- board units updated via radio, mobile phones, and the Internet, building a location bus system for the Transjakarta-Busway and developing an electronic toll collection system.

He said the workshop would be attended by a wide range of participants, including representatives of the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas), the Ministry of Public Works, the Jakarta administration, the Ministry of Communications, the Transjakarta Busway company, the University of Indonesia, JICA, and the University of Tsukuba in Japan.