Subway for Jakarta
Subway for Jakarta
A subway system for Jakarta? Wow!
"Finally!" was probably what most Jakartans uttered when the city administration announced its decision to build a subway transportation system to link Blok M to Kota in the downtown area last week.
Such a reaction is understandable given the fact that it took the government 30 years to make the decision from the time the idea of a mass rapid transit system was first proposed for Jakarta in the 1965-1985 city master plan.
It is not fair to compare Jakarta with other capitals -- even with neighboring Singapore -- which have long relied on subways for mass transit. However, we can argue that the period between the initial presentation of the proposal and the moment the government reached its decision was unusually lengthy.
Theoretically, every city with a population of over two million must have a mass rapid transit system which is cheap, non-polluting and can carry at least 40,000 passengers to a given destination per hour. Today Jakarta, whose population exceeds 10 million, relies mainly on a road network dating back to the pre- World War II system designed to serve the needs of a population of no more than 300,000 to 400,000 people.
The city's inability to provide an efficient and reliable public transportation system has contributed to the uncontrolled growth in the number of privately owned vehicles. Official records show that as of today, no less than 1.5 million motor vehicles are registered in the city. Meanwhile, there are only 3,500 large and 4,800 medium-sized buses, as well as approximately 10,000 mikrolet (mini-vans), 17,900 taxis and 15,100 bajaj, in operation to serve the huge number of commuters.
The result is serious congestion and people have started to worry Jakarta may become like Bangkok, where traffic jams have not only caused inefficiency, pollution and stress, but have also made foreign investors think twice before making any decision to do business in the Thai capital.
The explanation behind the length of time taken to make the decision is that to build an mass rapid transit system -- in this case a subway -- is costly for Jakarta and the city administration simply does not have the means to bring the dream project into reality.
It is timely that the central government has realized the need to take over tackling the problem before it gets any worse. Although the subway will only link two areas in Jakarta, it will serve the busiest traffic movement area in the capital. During peak hours, an average of at least 20,000 cars pass along Jl. Sudirman alone. Of that number, 86 percent of those vehicles are privately owned cars, 11 percent freight vehicles and a mere 2.6 percent public transportation vehicles.
Unfortunately, the construction of the 10-kilometer subway, estimated to cost US$1 billion, will not start until 1997. And even now that the decision has been made, there is no guarantee that everything will run smoothly. Experts have warned that building a subway in Jakarta will not be easy. For one thing, 70 percent of the city is prone to flooding. The lack of an adequate drainage system is fe ared to pose a serious problem of flooding in the subway system.
These problems show that had the city administration, or the central government, addressed the issue earlier they would have been saved a lot of headaches, including providing such huge amounts of funds to build the transit system. This matter also offers a valuable lesson to the city about the need to look as far as possible into the future to be able to anticipate the demands that economic and population growth present.