Jakarta to construct inner city toll roads next March

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Good news for those who now spend hours behind the wheel, desperately waiting for a respite from chronic traffic congestion: the Jakarta administration will soon start constructing six inner-city toll roads in March next year.

"We are preparing concrete measures to follow up the plan (to develop the toll roads), including consulting with the central government about prevailing regulations and coordinating with relevant government institutions about the project," Jakarta Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo said at City Hall after a meeting with city-owned developer Jakarta Propertindo.

Fauzi asserted that the development of a total 85-kilometer toll roads was in line with the macro transportation master plan, which has become the main reference in any transportation projects in the capital.

"The corridor linking Jl. Kramat Raya, Jl. Salemba and Jl. Matraman Raya and another corridor from Bekasi to Cawang in East Jakarta are among corridors which we will prioritize in the project since we all witness the most chronic traffic jams there every day," he said.

City Public Works Agency head Fodly Misbach said that the project would cost more than Rp 23 trillion (US$2.5 billion), or Rp 270 billion per kilometer per road section.

"The development project will last four to five years and the entire project will be wholly funded by private investors," Fodly said.

Fodly was confident the project would easily attract investors because it promised an internal rate of return (IRR) of 17.5 percent per annum.

Currently, bank interest charged on infrastructure project borrowing ranges from 12 percent to 17 percent.

Jakarta Propertindo will become the main developer in the project which will use mostly elevated roads.

The administration has warned that the traffic jams in the capital's streets would end up in complete gridlock by 2014 should there be no significant measures immediately taken to solve the traffic headache.

Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso has blamed an average annual 8 percent growth of car ownership inundating the already overcrowded city roads with more cars as the cause of the worsening traffic, but his administration has done little to curb the soaring growth of cars here.

Currently, Jakarta's streets, reaching a total of 7,576 kilometers in length, must accommodate 4.7 million vehicles, not to mention intercity vehicles also using inner-city roads.

Similarly, the latest study on the integrated transportation for Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi (SITRAMP) made by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) shows that the economic loss caused by the congestion now amounts to Rp 5.5 trillion annually.

The survey also says that cumulative economic losses up to 2020 are estimated to reach Rp 70.3 trillion, or almost 12 times higher than today's economic losses, if no significant efforts are made to resolve the chronic transportation problems.