Residents and visitors have continued to complain about the never-ending traffic congestion along Denpasar's main streets and Kuta holiday sites.
A resident, Rahmawati, shared her daily nightmarish trip to Ngurah Rai Airport, located some 10 kilometers from her house on Jl. Teuku Umar in downtown Denpasar.
"Previously, it took only 30 minutes to reach the airport. Now, I have to go at least three hours prior to my flight schedule because of the unexpected traffic jams in some major routes heading to the airport," she said.
Several streets heading to the airport, including Jl. Iman Bonjol, the Dewa Ruci intersection and the Nusa Dua highway experience traffic congestion problems.
"To avoid serious traffic jams, I usually hire an ojek *motorcycle taxi* to take me to the airport on several alternative routes," she said.
Chairman of the Bali Tourism Board IB Ngurah Wijaya, also said that many foreign visitors had complained about the traffic jams, saying a transportation system was badly needed to support the island's flourishing tourist industry.
"The local administration has not come out with proper solutions to handling traffic problems especially in tourist areas where international conferences and meetings take place almost every week."
Aloysius Purwa, head of the Bali branch of the Indonesian Association of Travel Agencies, also said that no real and effective actions had been taken to solve the lingering problem, which affects the tourism industry.
"One of the most effective and significant measures of tourist satisfaction lies in our traffic condition," Purwa said.
He further said that in addition to traffic jams, foreign visitors often complained about the condition of pedestrian facilities.
Almost all major streets in Kuta and other tourist destinations including Ubud in Gianyar and Sanur, do not have adequate and safe pedestrians.
"Bali has targeted to attract 2.3 million foreign visitors this year. Such an ambitious target must be followed by an improvement in tourist facilities here, including a transportation system," Purwa demanded.
Putu Armaya, chairman of the Bali branch of the Indonesian Consumer Protection Agency, urged local authorities to pay serious attention to upgrading transportation systems and traffic management.
"The local government seems to let these congestions occur everyday. They have done very little to manage these problems," Armaya said.
In the next few weeks, national school holidays will start and both domestic and foreign visitors will flock to Bali.
"During the peak holiday season, traffic jams will get more and more serious with thousands of additional vehicles coming from outside Bali," Armaya said
The local authorities, he added, had failed to enforce effective car possession and regulate traffic and public transportation facilities to ease the problems.
Responding to these complaints, I Gede Astika, head of the Denpasar Transportation office, argued that his administration had joined together with neighboring regencies to develop an integrated transportation network linking Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar and Tabanan regencies, a plan that has not yet been implemented.
"We are facing technical and financial constraints in the implementation of these transportation networks."
Astika said the Denpasar mayoralty had been renovating numerous streets and pedestrians.
"We cannot build new roads because of land acquisition problems."
