Parking: Tip of the iceberg

The Jakarta administration is again under fire for its recent move to have a private firm manage on-street parking using prepaid cards. The pilot project of the new system is slated to be introduced later this month in five locations: Jl. H. Agus Salim in Central Jakarta, Jl. Gajah Mada in West Jakarta, Jl. Raden Patah in South Jakarta, Jl. Jatinegara Timur in East Jakarta and Jl. Bulevar Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta beginning on May 26.

Like previous maneuvers, the decision, which was made prior to City Council approval and public consultation, has its pros and cons. From the point of view of transparency, it is not clear whether PT Adiwira Sembada was awarded the project through open and fair bidding. One city councilor alleged that the company, which was authorized to manage several on-street parking projects for years, has never performed well.

In 2001, on-street parking revenue amounted to only Rp 9.28 billion and increased slightly in 2002 to Rp 9.44 billion. Targets, it is worth noting, were set at Rp 30 billion at the lowest, based on the fact that the city has more than 4,300 on- street parking locations that can accommodate thousands of vehicles a day with fees of Rp 1,000 for a car and Rp 500 for a motorcycle.

Zatni Arbi, a technology expert, said that from the technological point of view, the system is not safe and could easily fail as it would rely too much on humans. Subways in Hong Kong and Singapore use similar systems, the difference being, according to Zatni, that the data in both those cities is transferred online in realtime, rather than manually, which means a minimum possibility of embezzlement.

The planned prepaid card system allows parking attendants to use Handspring Visor-brand Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), reportedly costing Rp 17.15 million or some US$1,990 each. A computer distributor, however, said a fully loaded Visor Pro only costs about $199, and to download simple software only costs between $15 and $18. Surely, there must be someone who can explain this big discrepancy PDA price quotations.

There is of course nothing wrong with the idea to apply "high technology" to curb corruption that has presumably resulted in the loss of billions of rupiah in parking revenue. The problem is the readiness of the people who must run the system.

There is no guarantee that the 2,500 parking attendants will understand the technology, while no one can assure that the new system is appropriate and will create more revenue. Improving parking revenue is a question of culture, attitude, morality and habit, not technology.

The decisionmakers must have disregarded the fact that, in Indonesia, corruption is a matter of culture and habit. We should have learned from experience that there are always ways for dishonest people to defeat high technology for the purpose of illicit gain. Corruption within the parking agency has so far allegedly been well organized, and employees and officials involved are believed to be protecting each other very well.

We agree with urban activist Azas Tigor Nainggolan that any efforts at improving the parking system must be done with two major objectives in mind: to ease traffic problems and to increase revenue.

With the prepaid card system, it is obvious that the city administration is thinking of merely taking a shortcut to improve parking revenue instead of overhauling the management of the whole parking system, including the human resources involved. What the administration has been doing so far is comparable to revealing just a small part of the tip of the iceberg of traffic mismanagement for the public to see.

The chaos in the parking business in Jakarta could perhaps best be compared with a cobweb that nobody has so far managed to clear. Surjadi Soedirdja, during his tenure as governor of Jakarta, initiated efforts to improve the management of the city's parking system, but failed for reasons that have remained unexplained.

As we see it, the city administration should have started by getting the priorities right. The current chaotic on-street parking system must be put in order. For that purpose political courage is needed to have the web of corruption within the parking agency investigated independently and in a professional manner. In other words, it is law enforcement, not high technology, on which we should hang our hopes to stop corruption.

But now that the pilot project is set to start on May 26, it is difficult to see how the city administration can lawfully backtrack on its deal with PT Adiwira Sembada. We can only hope that the city administration will work harder to improve its system of built-in control, because it is only in this way that the administration can hope to improve its public services to the public. Perhaps this is another chance for our city officials, the governor included, to make "comparative studies" in places such as Singapore, Hong Kong, France, England, Germany and Korea, where street parking is professionally managed. After all, they still have two weeks before the pilot project starts.