Yanking the 'iconic' three-wheelers from the streets

Yanking the 'iconic' three-wheelers from the streets

Eric Unmacht and Sukino Harisumarto, Deutsche Press-Agentur/Jakarta

In the period between the fall of man-powered public transport and the rise of cleaner, more efficient mass transit, one can usually find on city streets in Asia some sort of two-stroke engine on wheels that looks bad, smells bad and sounds bad, but nevertheless gets residents from A to B, however recklessly.

For Jakartans, it's the bajaj -- the orange, smoke-belching, ear-rattling three-wheeler left over from the 1970s.

It's such an obvious environmental wart that not even the drivers of the Indian-made vehicle, thousands of whom rallied outside city hall a few months ago in a last ditch effort to save it from extinction, will defend its smoky record.

"We understand about the pollution, but this is the only way we can earn money," said Abdul Waim, 56, who has driven a bajaj for the last 10 years and says he earns about Rp 24,000 a day. "There is no other choice for us."

Officials have struggled with how to quietly get the not-so- quiet vehicle off the roads since the 1980s, when the government first stopped issuing new licenses.

The motorized bajaj was once blamed for the downfall of the city's once-beloved three-wheel pedicab, which used to plod the city's streets decades ago and has now been almost completely swallowed by Jakarta's sprawling traffic.

Nevertheless, the bajaj has still found a few sympathetic voices in the capital who say it has become an "icon".

"Like the tuk-tuk in Bangkok, since its introduction in 1975, the Indian-made bajaj has been a familiar sight on the city streets," an article in The Jakarta Post said. "Indeed, it has captured the hearts of many, who have grown used to the rattling sound, the bumpy ride and the often slow-to-start vehicles."

"At present, a sitcom which is aired daily by a private TV station that relates the simple life of a poor bajaj driver in the metropolis, enjoys very high ratings."

In addition to the vehicle's practicality and traces of sentiment that have acted as defender for the bajaj, with usually two drivers sharing one vehicle for their livelihood, the fate of thousands of drivers has also stood in the way of officials who want to get rid of them.

But the city's ever worsening pollution over the years seems to have finally pushed some officials into action.

Although the City Environmental Management Agency (BPLDH) recently reported that Jakarta enjoyed more days with improved air quality last year than 2002, those relatively "good" days still total around 25 out of 365, compared with some 20 days in 2002.

Jakarta consistently jockeys for the number one spot as Asia's most polluted city and the government is finally trying to take the next step in offering clean, efficient public transit.

Following in the footsteps of leaders in Bangkok and other countries in the region, Indonesian officials are now plotting the routes for a planned 630-million-dollar monorail project that is expected to be completed by 2007.

In tandem, officials also announced plans to replace the bajaj with cleaner, quieter vehicles such as the kancil, which literally means "deer mouse" in the Indonesian language and which has so far won government approval over a proposed newer version of the bajaj that runs on natural gas.

Officials with the transportation agency say they replaced their first 50 bajaj with the four-stroke, four-wheel kancil this month, and will gradually pull all of the city's bajaj off the roads within the next two years. But in removing the bajaj, officials have also brought attention to what environmental experts say is the real source of the city's road pollution - buses and older vehicles. Vehicular emissions account for some 70 percent of air pollution in Jakarta. In addition to the 15,000 bajaj, the city is home to around 4.7 million vehicles - consisting of 1.3 million passenger cars, 403,000 commercial vehicles, 315,000 buses and 2.6 million motorcycles. NGO's monitoring air quality in Jakarta say that some 45,000 new cars are being sold in Indonesia each month, with some 70 percent destined for the streets of Jakarta, so experts say the air pollution problem is unlikely to be noticeably lessened by ridding the streets of bajaj. "You see a lot of cars that are broken, with black smoke, they are the ones that are polluting the air," said Tomoyuki Naito, environmental representative of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). "It's the old vehicles that are the source of the pollution." "Buses and unrepaired vehicles are a bigger problem," he said. Bajaj drivers have echoed these same sentiments in rallies and demonstrations, calling themselves scapegoats. They say if the government goes ahead with plans for cleaner alternative transportation, the fate of the existing bajaj should rest in the hands of Jakarta's residents. "If the government wants to replace the bajaj with kancil, just let it happen naturally," one bajaj driver said. "Just allow the consumer to decide whether they want to ride the kancil or continue to ride our bajajs." dpa eu sh blg

GetDPA 1.10 -- OCT 25, 2004 13:36:43