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Monorail please!
Sat, 10/11/2008 11:24 AM | Opinion
Jakarta is one of the most populated cities in the world. There are about 12 million people in Jakarta everyday. About five million of them are people who live in the suburbs, but work in Jakarta. In fact, this phenomenon brings many problems. One of them occurs in the field of public transportation. To minimize the problem, Jakarta should have a monorail. There are some reasons why Jakarta should have a monorail: It is faster, comfortable, has a big capacity and zero emissions.
Monorails are faster compared to other public transportation. Under normal conditions, a monorail goes up to 300 kilometers an hour while a car can only go 150 kilometers an hour, motorcycle goes about 80 kilometers and bicycle goes 30 kilometers an hour if there are no traffic jams.
It means people who use the monorail could save twice the time or more than people who commute by car. Furthermore, it is four times faster than motorcycles and 10 times faster than bicycles. The condition occurs only when there are no traffic jams. If there are, then it will be worse for the car and motorcycle riders. Unfortunately, traffic jams occur and are around us every single day.
Monorails are comfortable. Buses and train are not comfortable enough. They are littered with trash and have broken seats. The buses and trains don't have restrooms like the buses in London or the trains in Europe. Monorails have so many facilities to make passenger feel comfortable, such as air-conditioning, restrooms and televisions.
Monorails have a large capacity. A monorail can fit 825 people, whereas 400 cars can fit 825 people and 550 motorcycles can fit the same amount. Not only does the monorail have a very large capacity, but also the world can save energy if more people use the monorail.
Monorail don't pollute the air. It has zero emission because monorail uses electricity while SO2 and other dangerous materials are produced by uncompleted oil burning in motorcycle, cars or buses.
ARRIYADHUL QOLBI Jakarta
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Fierzee (not verified) — Sat, 10/18/2008 - 9:47pm
monorail..subway...anything to get out of this traffic nightmare..we're becoming more and more unproductive cause of all the trafic jams..
Ur & Us (not verified) — Fri, 10/17/2008 - 11:52am
Really agreed about the monorail.. and also try to think about making a highway from Jakarta straight to Bali.
Roy Prakoso (not verified) — Mon, 10/13/2008 - 4:38pm
I used to take train to the office long time ago (KRL jabotabek).It was really inconvenience; no air condition, people smoke and spit every where, etc. Don't ask about pick pocket, I have to keep my wallet away from many of them a long the way to my office.
The problem is not just how we build, but how you keep them well taken care of is also essential.
Now we need a strong political will from the government to accelerate accommodating good public transportation for Jakartans. This will automatically limit people to drive their own cars to the office. As a Jakartans, I think most of us agree that we would rather drive our own vehicle than take a public transportation if we have a choice of course.
Last but not least, people education, how to rise sense of belonging of public facilities among them is essential.
Procrastinator — Mon, 10/13/2008 - 2:57pm
Dear Arriyadhul Qolbi,
I don't know whether you are an utopist or simply a daydreamer. While your opinion has good intentions, I have to say it is rather wacko or maybe nutty.
First, I don't think that you know that trains and monorails are actually cousins, the difference is only that trains use two parallel rather small rails while monorails, of course, a single, massive rail. Some would also say monorail is actually categorized as a light train compared to ordinary, heavy train.
Why would a commuter monorail has a top speed of some 300 kilometers per hour? Unless it is a direct, express monorail linking one place to another such as the monorail linking Haneda airport with Tokyo city center. An urban, commuter monorail (or any other trains) will offer a good enough speed of 60 to 80 kph as it has to make stops every several kilometers.
Leave the task of high-speed trains to TGV or Shinkansen or any other bullet trains or perhaps one day the Argo Gede and Argo Bromo trains linking Jakarta with Bandung and Surabaya respectively. But high speed is not relevant in urban, commuter transport.
Then you said monorails are more comfortable than buses and trains due to their broken seats and littered trash. This is rather an issue of maintenance and not a certain system's superiority over the other. Build a monorail without proper care and maintenance and the result will be the same. Unfortunately, this is the Indonesian specialty, building but not maintaining.
Other amenities such as TV or air-conditioning or vending machines can also be installed in trains and buses as monorails can also run without air-conditioning system being installed.
Large capacity is not really the domain of monorail, as being a light train it has smaller capacity than the heavy train. I don't know where you are from but the Jakarta-Bogor electric train (KRL) mostly consists of eight cars per train and they can carry easily at least 800 or even 1,000 people.
Indeed, railway, be it a monorail or KRL or trains pulled by locomotive, will be much better than road transportation in term of capacity and timeliness. It depends on the government to choose which system to be used.
Restrooms in urban trains or buses? I don't think so. But we do have toilets in long distance, inter city buses and trains here.
More friendly environment? Monorails and KRLs indeed do not emit any hazardous gases. But then what about the powerplants to generate electricity? Would you recommend us to build solar- or wind-powered powerplants to generate the electricity for our rail networks? Or perhaps nuclear powerplant?
Merdeka!
Arjan Honingh (not verified) — Sun, 10/12/2008 - 7:11pm
Dear sir,
the idea for of a monorail in Jakarta in order to fight traffic jams, polution is understandable.
Your arguments for a monorail system in Jakarta on the other hand are not that strong.
There are alternative methods fofr a meaningfull improvement of the public transport.
The fact is that a quick monorail does not forsee effieciently in short stop-overs, which is needed in a completely urbanized area.
A fine mazed high frequent network from integrated short and long distance public transport is needed for sustainable long term development of Jakarta.
Arjan Honingh is working for the local traffic authority in Amsterdam, a city with state of the art public transport. Arjan doubt though if indonesian people will take a bicycle for short rides.