Traffic problems still unsolvable: Governor Surjadi

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration is unlikely to solve the city's chronic traffic problems in the coming years, Governor Surjadi Soedirdja has said.

Speaking at his year-end press conference at the City Hall Tuesday, the governor blamed the rapid growth in the number of vehicles for the steady deterioration in the traffic. "Unfortunately the construction of new roads cannot match the increasing number of vehicles," he said.

He cited records indicating that the number of vehicles had been increasing 14 percent annually while the length of the roads had been increasing only four percent.

The city now houses some nine million people with 2,165,200 vehicles. The total length of the capital's roads is 5,907.95 kilometers.

Surjadi said that traffic woes would not be solved in the near future. "I am a practitioner. I cannot predict when the city traffic will be smooth," he said.

He said that traffic problems also occurred in other big cities like New York, London and Tokyo.

"They have better infrastructure than us, but they're still facing traffic problems," Surjadi said.

Officials and experts have held many discussions and seminars on the traffic chaos. The conclusion was that the city's poor spatial planning was the main cause for the woes.

An oft-made suggestion in such talks was limiting the ownership of vehicles.

Surjadi said on Tuesday however that it was not that easy to limit the ownership of vehicles.

"We are living in a developing country where industrialization is being pushed and enhanced. One of the products of our industries is vehicles. This is very dilemmatic," he said.

Raising car tax might help solve the traffic problems. "But, we should anticipate people's reaction extra carefully before imposing new car taxes. The administration could force such a decision, which might cause new problems," he said.

Many significant efforts have been made by the administration to "cure" the problem. One is the three-in-one system for certain hours on certain streets.

The other efforts are constructing roads, including flyovers.

"We expect eight more flyovers to be completed by the end of 1997. Jakarta now has 17 flyovers. The long-awaited Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) project is scheduled to begin next year, The MRT could transport between 40,000 and 50,000 people between Blok M and Kota per hour," he said.

The basic design is complete and now only a presidential decree is needed for the project, he said.

In other part of his statement, Surjadi said that Jakartans were growing to be more selfish. "This is a social setback which is very alarming," he said.

"More people have been complaining about pollution, but fewer people support the green programs," he said as an example.

He also warned residents to be extra careful in anything relating to religious issues. "We should learn from the recent clashes in Situbondo, East Java, and Tasikmalaya, West Java," he said. (ste)