Subway unlikely

Subway unlikely

From my office window, high up in the Landmark Center, Tower A, I sometimes look down on the horrified traffic pile-ups at rush hours and wonder just how much the projected subway from Blok M to Kota could do to solve the traffic problem. Is it even feasible? And how long would it take to bore the tunnel?

The Jl. Sudirman underpass, which I overlook, took about two years to complete, and that is barely 50 meters long. So how long would it take to complete a tunnel of 15 kilometers from Blok M to Kota with presumably several stations on the way, with all the tunnels, escalators and booking offices?

To judge by the time the Sudirman underpass took, it would be well into the next century before it was in operation -- and we are talking about a single line.

Maybe its necessary to compare the project with the London Underground system, which is probably the most extensive in the world. I think I am right in saying that work on the first "Metropolitan" line began in the early years of this century. I first traveled on the underground as a small boy in the early nineteen twenties, when some of the locomotives were still small steam engines, which made life very smoky. The entire system has, of course, been electrified since well before the war.

The populations of Jakarta and London are much the same, though London's population expands enormously by day, with probably well over a million people commuting by rail, and not only by the underground system, but also on the main railway lines leading to the capital.

Therefore, maybe it would be wiser and cheaper to abandon the subway project in favor of an overhead monorail system, following the proposed subway route. To produce an adequate system like London's would probably take a century and cost untold billions of dollars.

RB SAWREY-COOKSON

Jakarta