Public transport needs massive investment

Public transport needs massive investment

M. Ali, Nottingham University, United Kingdom

Anyone returning to Jakarta after a length of time away will
no doubt notice the ugly, strangling traffic of the capital.
Trying to get around is a painfully slow, boring and frustrating
experience. The city is suffering from a gridlock that not only
increases the already huge amount of pollution blighting the
city, but has also made us more inefficient as we spend endless
hours stuck in traffic jams. All too obviously, the number of
vehicles on our roads is far outstripping the extent of our
roadway infrastructure.

If we went the American way, the remedy would be simply to
build more roads and add extra lanes to our toll roads; but this
is simply not a sustainable option. Jakarta's built environment
is already adversely affected by flyovers and multi-lane arteries
that do nothing to enhance the quality of our city life. To go on
extending the asphalt jungle would not be the solution.

Road building will simply create more roadways onto which more
vehicles will pour. The consequence will be the extension of what
looks more and more like a lineal car park, as cars get stuck in
near motionless bumper-to-bumper lines. The way ahead has to be
investment in our public transport.

We are all familiar with the sight of over-crowded, aged buses
straining the city. Their clouds of black smoke reflect their
need to be either completely discarded or massively refitted.
They are becoming more dangerous and have become a playground for
criminals. And the main concern of bus drivers remains cramming
in as many people as possible to collect as much revenue as
possible.

With city buses being little short of death traps on wheels,
no wonder so many people opt to clog the roads with their private
vehicles to escape the nightmarish experiences of public
transport.

Practically every city in the world has a similar experience,
but other cities do enact policies that seek to overcome these
problems, whereas Jakarta's city authorities seem inactive on
this issue.

Take Singapore for example. With its electronic pricing of
city center roads it has both found a way to raise extra capital
and reduce the amount of traffic congesting the city
center. European cities have experimented with "take a bus" days
and "leave the car at home" days that have directly encouraged
the use of public transport. And perhaps most notably of all
there is a general worldwide commitment to plow back money from
private modes of transport into public trains and buses.

This kind of "plow back" policy could and should surely also
be happening in Jakarta. With profits from the ever-busy toll
roads apparently being squandered and placed into the pockets of
a certain few, these toll roads are not the source of
reinvestment in the public transport infrastructure that they
could be. Everyday, tens of thousands of vehicles use, and pay
for the privilege of using, these toll roads. That money could
undoubtedly be put to work for our mutual public transport
benefit.

If remedies and inputs of investment are not found soon, then
we can only expect endless traffic congestion. We will have then
followed the unfortunate example of so many cities in the West
that have also suffered this kind of daily transport paralysis,
and led to incidents of "road rage" among motorists.

Indonesian motorists cannot exist without their horns.
Motorists willfully and aggressively beep at the smallest of
provocations. This daily sense of frustration on Jakarta's
roadways could create complete chaos and anarchy, should drivers
feel sufficiently provoked to get out of their cars and turn
violent.

But we can surely preempt such a nightmare scenario. The
concept of our public transport may be a dying one but life can
be breathed back into it. European examples, such as Paris and
Amsterdam, have shown that if the public sector takes care of the
public transport infrastructure, people will and do gladly use
it.

Public transport needs to be, and should be, reinvigorated so
that people have a reasonable choice other than adding to the
endless traffic jams caused by private transportation.

The writer is undertaking a dissertation on the management and
design of transportation infrastructure.