Jakarta races against time

Jakarta races against time

Willy Tumewu, Senior Lecturer, Transportation Engineering,
Bandung Institute of Technology, Bandung, West Java

Traffic congestion in Jakarta is severe simply because the
demand for transportation far exceeds supply. Thus,
transportation in Jakarta is costly compared to the services
offered, and caters to only the most necessary purposes.
Commuters have to leave home early in the morning and return late
at night; workday peak periods have been extended and already
cover most of the daylight hours; precious time is being wasted
during commutes. What can be done? Reduce demand, increase
supply, or a combination of both?

The demand for transportation increases with higher economic
prosperity. During this economic crisis some 10 million to 15
million trips are being made each day in the capital. To reduce
these trips would be detrimental to economic development. Half of
these trips are made by public transportation, and this is not a
bad statistic.

The supply of transportation in Jakarta is mainly from its
road network, with a small contribution from the trains serving
Greater Jakarta. How much road space is adequate? At present only
some 6 percent of the land area is used for roads, while in major
European cities roughly one-fifth of urban areas is used for
transportation infrastructure, and twice this in cities in the
U.S.

Clearly there is a strong case for increasing the supply of
transportation, but this should be done wisely through careful
planning of the land use-transportation system. Public
transportation should be made the backbone of the system. Urban
revitalization should be linked to mass-transportation
development. For instance, the presently proposed busway system
would merely optimize available roadspace, whereas a subway or a
triple-decker system would increase transportation supply.

We do not have to reinvent the wheel. A lot can be learned
from past experience. European cities were rebuilt after World
War II with an eye toward U.S. cities, which were already at a
more advanced stage. The development of eastern Berlin was a
second opportunity for German planners to test their theories.

In Asia we can look at what is happening in Kuala Lumpur,
Manila, Bangkok, Taipei, Seoul, Shanghai and Shenzen. But time is
not our side. The Jakarta intraurban toll road system was started
a quarter century ago and part of the outer-ringroad is still
being tendered out. And in the meantime, demand for
transportation has outgrown the additional supply being
provided.

The 1977 Indonesian Highway Capacity Manual states, among
other things, that an efficient road network is one without
traffic congestion, perhaps as in Singapore. Congestion increases
the cost of transportation dramatically through an increase in
travel time, vehicle operating costs and air and noise pollution.

Estimates of congestion costs in Jakarta range from billions
to trillions of rupiah per year, and these costs have to be borne
by the economy as a whole. A policy on land use-transportation
systems for major urban centers is badly needed.

If by some miracle the land use-transportation system in
Jakarta changed overnight into a smoothly flowing system, what
could possibly happen? A new equilibrium would be reached where
the attractiveness of Jakarta would invite more people and their
businesses to migrate to the capital, until congestion and
opportunities were again on a par with those in other cities.
This makes any remedy for Jakarta traffic congestion dependent on
a successful national urban land use-transportation policy.

Car ownership in Indonesia is still low. At present two-thirds
of all motorized vehicles in Indonesia are two wheeled; in the
year 2001 some 300,000 vehicles were sold plus 1.65 million
motorcycles. Nationally, only one-sixth of all motorized vehicles
comprise cars.

As the fourth most populated country in the world with many
mega-population cities, car travel should not be the favored
transportation solution for the larger cities. This would imply
that almost all provincial capitals need a mass transportation
system as part of their land use-transportation systems.

It would maybe take at least another quarter century for all
cities to solve their land use-transportation issues if they
started today. The present system of regional autonomy should be
utilized to develop regional centers into more attractive
locations as compared to Jakarta. But until then, Jakarta traffic
has to continue to suffer, despite all efforts at improvement.