Transportation experts and the Indonesian Consumers Protection Foundation (YLKI) are demanding the government and the House of Representatives' team working on the traffi c and transportation bill prioritize the rights of pedestrians and non-motorists.

They also criticized the bill for not siding with public transportation passengers and disabled persons, saying the bill mainly accommodated private car users.

Darmaningtyas, chairman of the Institute of Transportation Study (Instran), said the absence of articles regulating and protecting the rights of non-motorists was inconsistent with the macro transportation policy to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels.

"We regret the bill doesn't promote and regulate the use of nonmotorized vehicles, despite nonmotorized vehicles being able to minimize the impacts of global warming. This bill neglects the environmental perspective," he told a press conference here Saturday.

"It is a shame the bill doesn't clearly consider the rights of pedestrians as the most important among road users, and instead puts motorized vehicles on a higher pedestal."

He said the rights of disabled persons were also abandoned, as the bill only stipulated the disabled should wear a sign when crossing streets to notify drivers of their physical condition.

"The bill should have regulated that other road users should respect and accommodate the disabled, instead of ordering the disabled to use special signs to alert other people to their condition. This undermines the rights of the disabled for more protection on roads."

The bill, a revision to the 1992 Traffi c and Transportation Law, is scheduled to be passed at a plenary meeting this Tuesday.

With all the loopholes in the bill, Darmaningtyas said he doubted the bill, once passed into law, would be better than the previous law.

Member of the Jakarta Transportation Council, Harya Setyaka, shared a similar view, saying the bill should have focused on citizens as individuals who used roads, instead of focusing on motorized vehicles.

"This is the bill's biggest fl aw, focusing on vehicles as the main object, and thus neglecting individual rights," he said.

He also lamented the fact that private car users had always been treated as "the king of the road", when in fact public transportation should be given greater road access because public transportation benefi ted more people.

"The use of public transportation is all about effi ciency: more effi cient use of space on the roads, better quality air and less fossil fuel usage. Therefore, all transportation policies should focus on this issue," he said.

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