Life is hard for Tangerang and Bekasi residents

Life is hard for Tangerang and Bekasi residents

By Ida Indawati Khouw

JAKARTA (JP): Yuyun's daily commute works out to a long,
tiring four hours, involving changing public transportation four
times.

The private company employee's story is representative of
thousands of people who work in the capital but live on the
outskirts of the city, mostly in Tangerang and Bekasi.

Poor transportation facilities are what make their lives
difficult.

The 32-year-old father of one takes an ojek motor taxi from
his house to Kota Bumi terminal, changing to a van to Kalideres
bus terminal, taking a bus to Grogol terminal before taking
another van to Jembatan Dua.

Urbanists blame it on a lack of concern for ordinary citizens.
Jakarta's suburban areas have been built by housings developers
who have paid no heed city's master plan; instead, their aim of
providing houses on the city's outskirts is simply profit.

Therefore, most housing areas don't have proper access
connecting them to Jakarta, where most people work during the
days, as well as the lack of mass public transportation services.
Last year's data showed that up to 80 percent of the 12.7
millions Jakarta population are commuters.

"The development (of the suburban areas) is never conducted
based on the master plan. Besides, the growth is much faster than
the government's ability to provide transportation," said Andi
Rahmah, transportation policy analyst of the Pelangi Foundation,
a non-governmental organization focusing on environmental issues.

The Study on Integrated Transportation Master Plan for
Jabotabek Phase 1 said the Greater Jakarta population has been
continuously growing with the concentration on East-West axis
(Bekasi and Tangerang). The Jakarta 1985-2005 master plan
emphasized on the southern part of the city as the water
catchment. But the implementation shows the opposite.

"The master plan also said the transportation need was
developed to the North-South axis. The authority (state-owned PT
Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) railway company) focused more on the
Jakarta-Bogor train system instead of those servicing the Bekasi
and Tangerang routes," said Jack Sumabrata -- currently writing
his thesis on the sustainable transportation in Jakarta at the
University of Indonesia, referring to the so-called Greater
Jakarta train service.

Contrast to residents in southern Jakarta -- who have a better
transportation system due to the high frequency of Jakarta-Bogor
train service which reaches 75 fleets daily -- the Tangerang and
Bekasi route have lesser frequency and poorer conditions.

There is only eight fleets serving Jakarta-Tangerang
passengers daily and 20 fleets for the Jakarta-Bekasi route. No
wonder if train to both directions are always crowded with
passengers, some of them even sit on the roof and join the
engineer inside the locomotive, specially during peak hours.

The train condition is very poor with broken windows and seats
in the cars, lack of electricity during the nights, let alone the
unfixed schedules.

No improvement

However, PT KAI so far has no plan to make improvement.

"It's impossible to increase the frequency of the Jakarta-
Bekasi route, given the condition that it's the busiest tracks,
serving 231 fleets per day including trains heading to Central
and East Java," said PT KAI spokesman, Zainal Abidin.

"While the Tangerang route only has a single track with some
technical limitedness including its inability to be passed by
executive trains."

The company also has no plan to rejuvenate its trains, which
some of them are more than 25 years old, serving Tangerang and
Bekasi saying it is unprofitable.

"Last year we lost about Rp 69 billion (US$7.5 million) while
our monthly income was only Rp 4.6 billion," Zainal said.

Besides train, commuters only have buses as another option but
they also have notorious poor services. Buses are always
overloaded with passengers, forcing them to stand from Tangerang
or Bekasi to Jakarta protocol streets of Jl. Sudirman, moreover
in peak hours.

The government have actually built toll roads link both
satellite cities but the result is traffic jam in mornings and
afternoons.

Andi, who is also the Indonesian Transport Society spokesman,
said that Jakarta needs Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) to overcome
its problem.

"The government must provide MRT instead of constructing more
toll roads as it will only encourage private car ownership. The
government has so far neglected the feeder system, resulted in
appearance of informal mode of transportations," he said,
referring to an integrated hierarchical transportation system
that the vehicles are easily accessed starting from the arterious
roads up to the small roads.

The high cost planned MRT enrouting Blok M and Kota seems to
be a best solution for the city administration as well as its
plan on the Jakarta Outer Ring Road (JORR) projects.

But both Jack and Andi disagree the government's concept.

"The projects won't solve the problem as the MRT serves the
North-South axis therefore the workers living in Tangerang and
Bekasi in the East-West axis don't get the benefit. While the
JORR construction will only increase the number of private cars,"
Jack said.

He called on the authorities to solve the problem by improving
the existed transportation infrastructures specially buses and
train systems and services.