People await Serpong-Jakarta toll road
JAKARTA (JP): Both residents and employees in Tangerang regency are looking forward to the completion of a 13.1-kilometer Serpong-Jakarta toll road project that started in 1992.
They said the toll road, once completed, would help them reach their offices more quickly during rush hours.
Jill McLean, Director of the British International School in Bintaro Jaya in Tangerang, said many expatriates living in South Jakarta were hoping to see the project completed as soon as possible.
"We are among those who will benefit from the toll road," she said Monday.
She said the road section between Kemang and Bintaro Jaya was jammed virtually everyday.
Dorina Slater, a secretary of the Jakarta Japanese School, whose office recently moved to Tangerang, said she and her colleagues found daily commuting a grueling chore.
Regina, an employee of a private bank in Bumi Serpong Damai, Tangerang, said she had to go to her office early in the morning to beat traffic.
Tangerang, a suburb on the western edge of Jakarta has developed into a sprawling town of its own with the construction of homes, offices and shopping centers competing with each other in the last few years.
A project officer of the toll road who desired anonymity said that a 7.2-kilometer Serpong-Pondok Aren toll road segment, the first part of the Jakarta-Serpong stretch, will be completed in January 1998. About 30 percent of the road has now been constructed, he said.
The work is being completed by PT Bintaro Bumi Serpong Damai, a consortium of PT Bumi Serpong Damai, PT Hutama Aji Braga Mustika of the Drassindo Group and PT Jaya Realty Property.
The remaining 5.9-km stretch from Pondok Aren to Ulujami will be built PT Jasa Marga, a state-owned highway company.
Meanwhile, construction started Monday on a three-kilometer exit road from the Jakarta-Merak freeway to the 1,500-hectare Gading Serpong residential area near Tangerang.
The Rp 30 billion project, financed by PT Jakartabaru Cosmopolitan (PT JC) -- the developer of the Gading Serpong housing complex -- will be equipped with four tollgates and an overpass.
PT JC's president Soetjipto Nagari said the new access road would greatly facilitate traffic flows to and from the Gading Serpong residential area.
Tangerang Regent Sjaifullah Abdurrachman welcomed PT JC's financing of the road project, as the new access road would ease traffic congestion along the Serpong highway.
Abdurrachman hoped that more private developers would follow PT JC's good example in financing public facilities.
Gading Serpong, a housing complex with 33,000 homes -- of which 4,000 have been completed and sold -- is the first housing complex one encounters when traveling from Jakarta to Tangerang, followed by Bumi Serpong Damai housing and business complexes and Lippo Karawaci Village housing and business complexes. (03)