Tips to solve traffic jams

Tips to solve traffic jams

From Kompas

As a new resident in Jakarta, I have noticed how passengers in the city are so submissive in the face of traffic jams that there seems to be no innovation to solve the problem.

It takes one to three hours to travel from Bekasi to the House of Representatives building. Based on my first observation, the sources of congestion are centered in areas around toll gates.

On the roads near toll gates, various types of cars are packed during the same hours, including box vans, oil tankers, cattle trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles.

Therefore, travel hours should be arranged so that students are scheduled for earliest trips, private and government employees follow later, while large and heavy-duty cars are reserved for non-working hours or night trips.

Roads leading to freeways should not be too close to toll gates and the distance between one gate and another should not be unnecessarily too short either, with the number of gates being reduced.

Meanwhile, the fairly big income derived from toll road operation should also be spent on the construction of more flyovers and underpasses to ease traffic congestion. In this way, toll roads will truly function as freeways instead of being jammed themselves.

H.M. KAFRAWI R. Jakarta