President inaugurates railway bridge

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, Purwakarta, West Java

A new railway bridge in a West Java village is expected to make trips along the Jakarta-Bandung route safer and faster.

The 243-meter-long bridge in Cisomang village was built at a cost of Rp 114 billion (US$12.6 million). It was financed by a loan from the Austrian government and was constructed by Austrian contractor MCE Voest, which began work on the bridge in October 2001.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri inaugurated the railway bridge on Tuesday.

During the ceremony, Megawati urged state-owned railway KAI to maintain the safety and upkeep of the bridge.

"We should not let anything like the recent bridge collapse to happen again," she said. Last month a bridge in Subang, West Java, collapsed, sending cars and trucks plunging into the river below.

She blamed many such incidents on "our ignorance" regarding the need to maintain bridges, "not because the construction is weak".

The new steel arch bridge joins an existing 100-year-old bridge connecting the Jakarta-Bandung rail route. With two bridges, the number of trains able to pass along the route is expected to increase from three to five per hour.

The old bridge was constructed in 1901 and has operated since 1905, during which time the government has carried out no major repair work on it.

With the new bridge, part of the double-track railway project across Java, the travel time between Jakarta and Bandung could be cut by about 15 minutes. In 2005, the government is expected to begin construction on a new bridge that will eventually replace the old bridge at Cisomang.

Project chief Nasjruddin Lubis said the new bridge was expected to last for 200 years, and that KAI planned to turn the old bridge into a tourist attraction. Photo on Page 5