Letter: Car-free Day

Wed, 08/20/2008 10:18 AM  |  Reader's Forum

Let's institute, instead of Car Free Day, a carefree day when at least one day a week people get to drive freely and "let their hair down shifting into fourth gear", so to speak. Normally I drive only on weekends when traffic is light and driving is a pleasure without the daily horrendous traffic jams we endure. At least on Sundays let people experience the joy of driving.

The last Sunday of the month is now designated as Car Free Day when they close down the express lanes of certain main thoroughfares until 2 p.m. I wonder about the sanity of this program and what benefit it brings, if any, to stage a monthly car free day in the first place.

I strongly suspect it's just a gimmick, although the intended impact is better care of the environment, saving the Earth and perhaps conserving fuel.

Will it really help reduce the number of cars on the road in the long run? Conserve fuel? Reduce air pollution? Create awareness? Awareness of what? Who these days doesn't know we need to conserve energy, reduce greenhouse gases, help reduce climate change and save the Earth?

People who need to drive will drive. Nobody can stop them, blocked roads or no. By blocking the roads you are clearly increasing inconvenience for them. By creating such heavy congestion in the slow lanes it only adds to the already polluted air.

It also increases the consumption of fuel which we are supposed to conserve! So everything seems to fly right back in the faces of the organizers of Car Free Day.

Instead of alleviating problems, it aggravates public frustration for anyone on the roads with a specific plan for a beautiful Sunday, which only gets derailed by such futile exercises.

Rather than adopting such obstructive methods yielding no real solution, try to do something more meaningful, enduring and constructive, such as helping city authorities with ideas to improve the railway stations and feeder bus service which supplements the main Transjakarta busway corridors, thus encouraging people to use public transportation.

And how about devising a program to inculcate some discipline into the taxi drivers and making that option safer? Think beyond just Car Free Day.

MATHEW NINAN W.
Jakarta

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