Putting order to the chaos
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.