JP/17/TRAFFIC
Understanding the causes of Jakarta traffic jams
To understand traffic problems thoroughly is the first step toward an attempt to solve this royal mess, right? Here are several corroborating fact(or)s, which contribute to the horrendous traffic conditions in the city.
1. Greater Jakarta's population of over 11 million has expanded greatly, especially in the east (Bekasi) and the west (Tangerang), but the city's transportation system has always focused on developing and/or improving the north-south grids -- a system inherited from the Dutch colonial administration, which originally designed the city.
2. Jakarta has only 7,500 kilometers of road. It must accommodate 4.7 million vehicles. Let say each vehicle takes up an average of three meters of road, then, if all vehicles in the city are on the streets, they would require at least 14,100 kilometers of road, meaning that if just half of the vehicles were on the road at the same time, it would be total bumper to bumper traffic -- not too unlike a gigantic parking lot.
Shockingly, the majority of Jakartans, or 56.3 percent, use public transportation, only 13.3 percent use private cars and 28.3 percent ride motorcycles.
3. Jakarta has about 600 railway crossings which can slow traffic as trains pass every 15 minutes. Overpasses and underpasses may help relieve some traffic congestion but there aren't nearly enough to really solve it.
4. Many pedestrian sidewalks are notoriously occupied by street vendors, forcing people to walk in left lane of streets, effectively cutting one lane off of most roads. Sixty five percent of fatalities in traffic accidents are pedestrians 35 percent of which are children.
5. Unsuccessful solutions like the three-in-one regulation, only shift the problems to other places. Alternative streets also result in traffic congestion as damaged vehicles block the road.
6. Amid chronic traffic congestion, many people, especially government officials and VIPs use police escorts complete with sirens to force other motorists to pull over to make way for them.
7. Many roads are in a state of disrepair causing motorists slow down, creating bottlenecks and inevitably traffic congestion.
8. Many projects under construction take up several lanes of road for the installation of telephone lines, water pipes and electricity projects.
9. Hundreds of spots on the city streets are prone to flooding and after just a mild shower they can be 10 to 20 centimeter deep ponds across the road causing motorists to inch their way through the quagmire and again creating more traffic headaches.