Rest Areas at KM 57 and 62 Cause Eid Return Traffic Jams, Public Works Minister to Replan
BREBES, KOMPAS.com – The peak of the Eid return traffic predicted for 28-29 March this year serves as a true test for toll road infrastructure.
Public Works Minister Dody Hanggodo has personally ensured that the journeys of millions of holidaymakers are not hindered by road potholes or rest area congestion causes.
According to him, the biggest challenge on the ground currently is not just vehicle volume, but extreme weather.
High rainfall intensity, combined with heavy vehicle loads, naturally creates new potholes that threaten safety.
“My instructions are clear: as soon as a pothole appears, it must be patched within 1x24 hours. I monitor continuously, like on the Cirebon-Bandung stretch where I found pothole spots yesterday; they must be fully addressed today,” Dody stressed during his field inspection, as quoted from NTMC Polri on Saturday (28/3/2026).
Evaluation from the previous mudik flow shows one major weak point with significant impact: Rest Areas KM 57 and KM 62 on the Jakarta-Cikampek Toll Road.
These two points have become the main “bottlenecks” due to overly narrow entry gate designs, causing queues to snake onto the toll road shoulder and paralysing main lane traffic.
The Public Works Minister assured that a fundamental redesign of the rest areas will be carried out soon.
“After the return flow ends, a special team will be formed to redesign the entry and exit layouts to be gentler and capable of handling large vehicle volumes,” Dody stated.
This overhaul is targeted for completion before the 2027 Christmas and New Year holidays to avoid similar congestion scenarios.
Meanwhile, according to PT Jasa Marga (Persero) Tbk’s President Director Rivan Achmad Purwantono, around 2.5 million vehicles or 74 percent have returned to Jakarta.
“Thus, there remains 25 percent or about 500,000 vehicles predicted to crowd the toll roads this Saturday and Sunday,” Rivan said.
For the issue of rest areas being too far apart (especially on the Batang-Semarang stretch), Jasa Marga has prepared 9 functional rest area points outside the toll roads.
Interestingly, holidaymakers will not be charged additional toll fees when re-entering the toll road after using these functional points.
In response to public complaints about the scarcity of rest facilities on some stretches, Dody revealed that the government is examining the “trade balance” with investors.
Building permanent rest areas is economically dilemmatic if they are only busy once a year. However, the government is committed to providing special incentives to attract investors to build Type A or B facilities for future public comfort.