Traffic engineer for Jakarta

"One way traffic even creates new problems," said Tubagus M. Rais (Jakarta Post, Sept.1). He is quite right, but it is not only one-way traffic. It is total lack of foresight.

About three years ago I wrote in this column that the only hope of solving Jakarta's ghastly situation was for Jakarta city administration to engage the services of a highly qualified traffic engineer from a Western country.

Let me give just one example of where lack of foresight has created a really awful `macet' (traffic congestion), which anybody with a grain of common sense should have foreseen.

The opening of the Jalan Sudirman underpass, was presumably, meant to ease the traffic problem. Far from it. What do we have now? We have a stream of traffic, two or three abreast, pouring down from Jalan Sudirman, with a view to either turning left into the underpass, or right onto the new road (possibly to find its way onto Jalan Rasuna Said).

Then we have traffic passing through the underpass and turning right, past Landmark Centre, either to turn right again, via the Landmark roundabout, onto Jalan Sudirman, or to bear left toward Jalan Rasuna Said.

Finally, you have the unfortunates, like myself, who are leaving Landmark Centre, who have to join the queue coming from the Rasuna Said direction, in order to try to force our way down towards the underpass and to turn right at the traffic lights along the new road, in order to get onto Jalan Rasuna Said, which is my only feasible way home.

Even at 5:00 p.m., the situation is grotesque. It can take me 10 minutes to travel the 200 meters from Landmark to the traffic lights by the underpass.

Lately, there has been a policeman on duty, complete with his inevitable "Ton-ton Macoutte" dark glasses blowing his whistle and waving his arms, but this seems, if anything, to create greater chaos.

This sort of situation might have been avoided, if the Municipality had engaged a traffic engineer years ago. Maybe it is too late now.

The problem is compounded by the construction of even more high rise office blocks in an area which is already over congested. Why on earth does the government go on granting building licenses to contractors, involving hundreds of million dollars, simply to make the traffic chaos worse than ever? Each new tower block is going to generate hundreds more vehicles on the roads.

That money would be far better spent on projects designed to improve the life styles of the millions of underprivileged citizens of this country. The government only needs to prohibit banks from lending money to developers of office blocks in the center of the city, and only to grant loans for projects of social importance throughout the archipelago.

R.B. SAWREY-COOKSON

Jakarta