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.