New busway corridors to open before fully finished
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The city administration is planning to launch busway corridors II and III on Jan. 15 despite the fact that work along the routes is still under way and only a few buses are available to ply them.
Corridor I stretches from Pulogadung in East Jakarta to Harmoni in Central Jakarta, while corridor II is from Harmoni to Kalideres in West Jakarta.
Jakarta Transportation Agency head Nurachman said on Thursday that the soft opening would be on Jan. 15 with only 23 buses plying the route from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Busway operator PT TransBatavia plans to operate 71 buses along the two routes. TransBatavia is owned by several city bus operators.
He said that fares for the new corridors would be Rp 2,000 (20 U.S. cents) from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. and Rp 3,500 from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Corridor I from Blok M in South Jakarta to Kota in West Jakarta will also apply the same fare system.
Nurachman said tryout bus runs would be held from Dec. 15, 2005 to Jan. 14, 2006, using two empty buses that would not pick up any passengers.
"Full operation of the two corridors will begin in April with 71 buses," he announced on Thursday.
Nurachman acknowledged that only eight of the 23 buses for the soft opening were new, while the remaining 15 buses would come from those currently plying corridor I.
This means that only eight buses will use compressed natural gas (CNG), while the other buses use diesel fuel.
Previously, Governor Sutiyoso and other relevant officials in the administration repeatedly said that all buses in corridors II and III would use CNG.
Bylaw No.2/2005 on air pollution control requires all public transportation vehicles in the capital to use CNG after February next year, but the city lacks facilities for utilizing CNG.
Currently, the city administration is constructing two CNG stations -- one on Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan in East Jakarta and the other on Jl. Daan Mogot in West Jakarta -- as filling stations for buses operating along corridors II and III.
That busway corridors II and III are not 100 percent ready to open for business can be seen from the amount of unfinished infrastructure, including shelters at the Kalideres bus terminal, a overpass on Jl. Hasyim Azhari and the interchange terminal in Harmoni.
As the overpass and interchange terminal are not ready, busway buses will for the time being travel along Jl. Suryopranoto, Tomang, and Jl. S. Parman, instead of Jl. Hasyim Ashari as initially planned.
The trial buses will not enter the Kalideres bus terminal until a busway shelter has been built there.
Nurachman said that as the city administration was unable to supply 71 buses for the two corridors, other buses would be allowed to continue operating along the routes for now.
The city allocated about Rp 500 billion for the construction of the two corridors and has proposed a Rp 800 billion budget to develop four more busway corridors in 2006.