More east-west links needed for Jakarta's commuters

Tantri Yuliandini and Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta's population has expanded massively in the east and the west, but the city's transportation system has been developed according to the north and south grids, experts say.

Such uncoordinated development, if not corrected, would only aggravate traffic problems in the capital, according to urban transportation expert from Trisakti University, Zaini Noer.

"This issue should be addressed. Otherwise, traffic flow in the city will continue to be in a messy state and even worsen," he said.

Problems associated with urbanization in Jakarta had caused former governor Ali Sadikin to adopt a policy to remove residential areas away from the city center in the 1970s, he said.

Ali succeeded in moving residential areas into the suburbs, and subsequently South and Central Jakarta suffered negative population growth, Zaini said.

According to a study by Aria Indra Purnama from Canberra University's Centre for Developing Cities, Bekasi, east of Jakarta, has more than 430 housing estates and satellite cities, including Lippo City, Kota Baru Cikarang, Kota Baru Pondok Gede, and Bumi Bekasi Baru.

The estates covers a total area of approximately 381 square kilometers, and provide about 70,000 to 80,000 new housing units a year, Aria said in his paper published over the Internet.

Tangerang in the west has also seen the rapid development of housing estates over the past decades, including Lippo Karawaci, Bumi Serpong Damai and Citra Raya.

Unfortunately, the success in spreading out housing estates into the west and east of Jakarta has not been followed by adequate development of road infrastructure.

The only adequate road system linking east and west Jakarta is the inner-city toll road, with the outlying toll roads to Cilegon in the west and Cikampek in the east.

This toll road, however, is heavily congested not only due to commuters' vehicles but also intercity vehicles traveling from western to eastern Java and vice versa.

Disregarding the huge flow of traffic from east to west and vice versa, the development of transportation infrastructure in the city continues to concentrate on a north-south grid -- a system inherited from the Dutch colonial era.

In the past, the Dutch relied on the Ciliwung river for transporting goods to Depok and Bogor areas in the south from the Sunda Kelapa port in the north.

Unfortunately, over a century later, the north and south orientation toward transportation infrastructure has not changed despite the development of housing estates in the east and west of the capital.

The government and city administration, therefore, should now address the problem of the heavy traffic flow from east and west of the city by building more grids linking the east and west.

Another solution would be to reduce the traffic burden from the suburbs to the capital and vice versa during rush hours, according to Zaini.

The latest data from the Central Bureau of Statistics shows that the total population of Jakarta is 8.3 million people, however this figure rises dramatically during the day to about 11 million.

The figures show that about 2.7 million commuters enter the capital in the morning for work and leave in evening for their respective homes in the Greater Jakarta area, causing massive congestion at the points of entry.

Another solution would be to develop commercial centers in Bekasi and Tangerang, thus reducing the traffic burden to and from Jakarta from those towns, Zaini said.

Another good solution, according to Zaini, would be to move government or political centers away from the city center, as the Malaysian government did.

"Malaysia for instance moved its center of government some 30 kilometers away from the city center to alleviate congestion," he said.