Traffic in the world's most congested city

On average, every Jakarta resident, the Indonesian capital, charges 10 years of life expectancy to squeeze together on traffic-congested roads.

Street of Jakarta
About 3.5 million Jakarta residents choose cars as their means of transportation to cool in hot and humid weather, and on the other hand, to show rich status despite the traffic jam of more than four hours a day. , According to the Guardian.

They persist sitting motionless, waiting in the car can not move in the peak time frame from 5h - 8h and from 17h - 20h. Other hours of the day are also difficult to move.
Statistics show that Jakarta is the world's worst congestion city, with an average of 33,000 drivers per year on average, resulting in a 70% Contaminated gases come from vehicle emissions.

The famous Indonesian journalist Seno Gumira Ajidarma does not pretend to mean that Jakarta's average person wastes 10 years of life spanning hard-wired roads.

Although the capital has made many attempts to limit the number of cars on the roads during peak hours, such as the date of par excellence, the measure taken after the regulation must have at least Three people sharing a car were abolished after more than one pilot year.

The rules of car sharing arise many social problems when the orbits are filled with rowes to pull the car owner does not have two companion, or control the danger when strangers go car sharing.

It is expected that by 2040, the population of the "Greater Jakarta Extension" will reach 40 million, questioning whether Jakarta is finding a viable transportation solution or a time-wasting obsession with being stuck on. The road still exists.


The solution uses two-wheeled motorcycles

Bogor Satellite City is about 40 km from the center of the capital, where most of Jakarta's civil servants live. Typically, they will spend two hours driving to work, while serious traffic jams will take more than three hours.

The line of immobile cars stretching over the freeway, interwoven over the motorbike pass, each passing one centimeter. Traveling on a motorbike is a bit more moving than cars, so more and more people are turning to motorbikes.

Jakarta is a city of two-wheeled motorcycles, and there is even a Go-Jek smartphone for motorbike taxi drivers.

"Motorcycles are twice as fast as cars in the inner city of Jakarta, but only 10th in terms of fuel consumption and costs and more compact size," said Nadiem Makarim, Founder and CEO Go-Jek said.

After launching the Go-Jek application last year, the company's sales increased rapidly, enabling them to partner with Grab, a competitor to neighboring Malaysia and Uber in the motorcycle taxi sector. The three companies offer discounts, big discounts to customers against the strong opposition of traditional taxi firms.

The Go-Jek application has so far had more than 25 million downloads, showing more and more people using the service, and opening up the potential for new services such as home cleaning or massage services. Whether at home within 90 minutes. Fastest-growing door-to-door delivery service in Southeast Asia. The company is expanding more services such as beauty care, flower delivery, parcels, medicine, tickets for performing arts.

However, on the other hand, the rapid increase in the use of motorbike taxiing can lead people to abandon conventional means of transportation such as buses or trams.

Yoga Adiwinarto, director of the National Institute for Non-Proliferation of Transport Development in Indonesia (ITDP), said that "the two wheeler transport service is killing public transport."

Makarim does not agree with this view.

"Our primary customer segment is smartphone users, the middle class has generally shifted to using their own car, they never even bothered to get on the bus," he said. Consider.


The subway

The metro system was soon established in major cities in the region such as Manila (1984), Singapore (1987), Kuala Lumpur (1995) and Bangkok (2004), while Jakarta was Southeast Asia's largest city does not yet have a subway system.

After more than four decades of discussion, the $ 1.7-billion Jakarta subway system was started, which is expected to shorten the time it takes to move from Bogor to the city center. When the first phase is completed in 2019.

However, the project faced many difficulties in the dispute over land use rights in the south of the city, delayed land clearance causing delays in construction progress.

The long awaited international airport route will be completed next year. Phase I of the overhead railway project is also set to open in 2018, the time of the Asian Games. There is an overhead railway system, the transport capacity of the entire railway sector can be increased from 800,000 to 1.2 million passengers a day.

The next destination of subway systems, highways, international airport lanes and even high-speed trains departing from Bandung, about 160 km east of the city, are heading to the center. New city center at Dukuh Atas.

For many years, Jakarta's old-style tram system has operated continuously and is always full of people both in the train and on the roof. The train from Bogor to Jakarta is only 55 minutes away - twice as fast as by car. Recently, a new regulation has been issued banning the boat from sailing on the roof of the ship or trawling on the side of the ship and the offender will be severely punished. The new regulations make the situation worse in the car at peak hours than ever before.


Fast bus

Yoga Adiwinarto, director of ITDP, said there is a faster way to travel by public transportation in the city, which is the TransJakarta bus system that ITDP supports the design of the deployment. The construction time of this system is only two years and the cost is only a fraction of the metro.

12 years ago, Jakarta was the first city in Southeast Asia to launch a fast bus system. TransJakarta is the world's longest bus system with 210 km long, carrying about 350,000 people per day and is highly regarded in terms of efficiency, especially in the metro area. Buses are equipped with air conditioning system, a separate area for women at the head of the car, even recently 10 bus fast pink for women have put into operation.

"The fast bus system demonstrates the superiority of the metropolitan area, with public transportation moving much faster than a car, even faster than a motorbike on regular roads. Congestion in the city center, due to priority private lanes, "said Yoga Adiwinarto.

However, outside the inner city is a completely different story. Owners of vehicles traveling from satellite cities of Jakarta such as Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi are ready to encroach on the fast lane priority bus at any time. During peak hours, the fast bus from Bogor to central Jakarta takes two to three hours. When traffic jams, police also turn a blind eye to cars and motorcycles encroach on the fast lane of the bus.

Yoga Adiwinarto emphasized that the bus's fast-paced bus network is stretching to many parts of the expanding Jakarta area as more people use the fast bus as a transportation vehicle.

"Expanding the fast bus network to Jakarta's satellite cities is having a lot of problems, businesses have kept backing up, and the government is lacking in supportive policies. I'm very positive in improving traffic conditions - building subway systems, subsidizing public transportation, parking fees - but the central government has not had any positive moves, "he said.


Encourage bicycles

Every Sunday morning, motorbike banning day in Jakarta, thousands of people are happy to ride bicycles on big avenues, which are difficult to navigate due to the compacting of vehicles.

Gandrie Ramadhan frequently uses bicycles. He works as a transport coordinator in the city for the ITDP, cycling about 16 kilometers a day, crawling through the small streets, but also inevitably have to make big roads with cars.

Gandrie Ramadhan or peddle around the streets of the city is home to many embassies in Menteng County, where traffic is sparse and the streets are shady. However, just off the Boulevard Sudirman is met immediately bad traffic congestion. Around is the shrill noise of the green kopaja buses or the black smoke from the exhaust pipes exhausted from the long-term diesel engine exhaust. Maintenance of the MetroMinis bus is painted in two orange-green colors.

"It's hard to move, so it's not a big threat, it's the scary new motorcycle that always wriggled, hit the hammock, overtook the bike more slowly, and Kopaja and MetroMinis did not say, "Gandrie Ramadhan commented.

The bikers' lane in Jakarta is separated by paint lines and foot prints, which are often encroached on by motorcyclists. Gandrie Ramadhan believes that investing in better road infrastructure is safer, more and more people will use bicycles in the city.

Remove the traffic nightmare

Currently, businesses in the city are very interested in helping workers with parking costs, the government has approved a plan to build six high-speed toll roads across the downtown area to mitigate Traffic pressure. The Bank promotes the "low-cost car" movement, encouraging customers to use small-displacement vehicles by offering very low interest-rate loans.

Yoga Adiwinarto said, "The Jakarta municipal government is moving in the right direction, but it is not comprehensive. The low population density is concentrated in the city's periphery and the underground network of outlying traffic systems is too far away to make traffic. When the population density is significant, their first choice will be walking or biking, if they need to go further they will choose to use the bus or subway. " .

Jakarta's current state of traffic is still very long, but the government has set a target to increase the capacity of public transport from 23% to 60% by 2030.

"It's a positive sign," Yoga Adiwinarto said. "Four hours a day wasted just to sit in the car really not pleasant."

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