Traffic engineer for Jakarta

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