Six-hour delay colors homecoming
Tony Hotland and Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A six-hour delay colored Friday's homecoming for travelers on economy-class trains as the number of returning holidaymakers remained low.
The Gaya Baru Malam Selatan train was derailed in Cirebon, West Java, at around 4:45 a.m. when the wheels of one of its 12 cars came off the tracks.
The train, carrying 184 passengers, departed from Surabaya on Thursday afternoon and finally arrived at Pasar Senen railway station in Central Jakarta at 12 p.m., six hours behind schedule.
A passenger, Edi, said that the train started to shake at a turn near a bridge in Ketanggungan, near Cirebon.
"We were panicking because the train stopped on the bridge," he said. "But passengers managed to keep calm after realizing that no one was hurt."
The incident forced passengers on board the last three cars to crowd into the other nine cars. The derailed cars were finally removed but it caused a six hour delay for the Bima train from Surabaya and the Gajayana train from Malang, East Java. Both trains, carrying more than 300 passengers, were rerouted through the southern route but they were still six hours behind schedule upon their arrivals at Senen railway station.
The derailment took place only a day after the Matarmaja train traveling the route between Malang and Jakarta was derailed in Semarang, causing hours of delay for its some 400 passengers.
The incident, however, did not cause too much disruption as the number of returning travelers after the Idul Fitri celebration, which fell on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26, remained low.
Heads of railway stations and bus terminals expected the influx to peak over the weekend from Friday evening to Sunday, with some two million Jakartans returning home as most office workers and students will resume activities on Monday.
"The peak will be, most probably, on the weekend because people will go back to work on Monday," spokesman of state-owned railway company PT KAI, Zainal Abidin, told reporters.
He said that tickets for travelers returning to Jakarta from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1 had been sold out in most cities, particularly, of Yogyakarta, Semarang and Surabaya.
Pasar Senen railway station saw 16 arriving trains on Friday with a total of 6,125 passengers. The number was slightly less than Thursday's 7,935 people.
Pulogadung bus terminal, East Jakarta, saw over 5,000 people arrive on 100 buses. The terminal experienced the peak of the influx on the seventh day after the holiday last year with 48,954 passengers arriving on 977 buses.
At Tanjung Priok seaport in North Jakarta, the number of arriving passengers was below some ships capacity.
PT Pelni's Kelud, sailing from Belawan seaport in North Sumatra to Jakarta, only carried 816 travelers on Thursday, far from its capacity of around 1,500 passengers.
"There is no significant increase in passengers compared to regular days," said Sutrisno, the head of operations at Tanjung Priok seaport. He expected the peak on Sunday when another ship from Belawan would dock.
The Soekarno-Hatta International Airport's domestic terminals were also quiet. The airport's field coordinator for Idul Fitri, Gatot Priyono, said that the peak of the influx would be this weekend.
To provide security amid the increasing inflow of passengers over the weekend, Gatot pointed out that the airport's police precinct would deploy 80 officers at the domestic terminals.
As for people traveling in private vehicles, toll road operator PT Jasa Marga started to provide additional lanes for vehicles from the northern coastal route entering the Cikopo toll gate on Thursday.