Putting order to the chaos

Although many of the plans now apparently in the making are still unclear at this stage, the repeatedly stated intent of Jakarta's city administration to put the public transportation system in order should help at least to keep hopes of having better transit operations in the near future alive.

It is, after all, a generally accepted view that any effort to bring order to this city's much denounced traffic and transportation confusion must begin with the drastic improvement of the public transit system.

It is in this context that we welcome the news that a new testing center for public transit vehicles will shortly become operational to ensure the roadworthiness of Jakarta's city buses.

The center will be operated by PT Suar Adhika Wahana Ujindo, a private company which was granted operating rights by the Jakarta city administration last year to ease the process of public transit vehicle testing.

According to the company's assistant director, Noto Widigdo, it will take the facility only 15 minutes to perform all of the tests required on a given vehicle. A conveyor belt makes it unnecessary for the driver to even get out of his vehicle while it is taken all the way from the beginning to the end of the testing process. This is intended to save time and eliminate go- betweens.

As was reported last year, two private companies have been granted the right to operate test centers. The second one is PT Nakia, in West Jakarta. For some reason, only one of the centers is opening up.

Nevertheless, the service which the new facility brings can obviously help considerably to ensure the roadworthiness of our public buses. That seems to support the stance that participation by private enterprise can do a lot to help the Jakarta municipality to alleviate its problems.

To be sure, Jakarta's traffic woes are far from solved. The chaos that prevails on this city's roads has existed for so long and has become so ensconced that problems are often intertwined and attempts to improve conditions in one place can bring adverse effects elsewhere.

Take for example the recent attempts to have minibuses run with their doors closed -- no doubt a sound measure to take from the logical point of view, but one that flopped because bus crews promptly went on strike to protest their loss of income. The measure has thus been "postponed" for an indefinite period of time.

One might also wonder how helpful the planned measure to reduce the number of seats on city buses so that more standing room will be available will be. While such an arrangement may help to prevent people from hanging from the doors, the measure, by itself, will certainly not help to discourage pickpockets and other criminals from operating on the city's buses. This is one of the reasons why those who can afford it prefer to avoid using city buses and choose to drive cars instead.

Complications could also arise from the plans to allow city buses to run against the flow of traffic on one-way streets.

All this notwithstanding, we believe that as long as the authorities remain consistent in their efforts to bring order to the chaos on the roads, a good deal can be still be done. And as the new test facilities prove, much may be gained by good planning and by seeking, where appropriate, more active participation by the private sector.