This is a comment on an article titled “Jakarta’s rudimentary public transportation” written by Ivan Hadar on July 9, 2010 and readers comments posted through this newspaper’s website.
Nice dissertation Pak Ivan but you have merely described the problem, thrown a few grains of rice to the wind to see where they fall and painted no vision for the future.
I think this highlights the problem with our civic leaders thinking for decades, always ready to acknowledge the problem but rather than paint of vision of where Jakarta transportation is going, jump on the bandwagon and back more patch up projects such as the busway, monorail (doomed from the beginning), more bajaj, etc.
There is a lot of talk, and only talk, about subway trains. Obviously finance and competitiveness is an issue. But given that on the one hand the Jakarta administration is heavily subsidizing buses and RI is subsidizing petrol (see the conflict?) for public transport in its present form is a burden on the people.
With government subsidy on petrol likely to exceed US$10 billion, there is plenty of opportunity for incrementally transferring that bizarre subsidy into funding sustainable public transport. I believe that unless Jakarta urgently invests in a rail system, both underground and above ground, as a city it will fail and then everyone will pay dearly.
On air pollution, it is already hazardous and with millions of two stroke engine motorcycles being added to the already congested streets, air quality will get a lot worse before it gets better. And before you get too carried away with Bogota as a model, it is worth doing a reality check of the differences with
Jakarta.
We are part of Asia and surrounded by great examples of good transport systems (Singapore, Japan, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur). Jakarta is the largest city but very much the ugly duckling with failing public transport. Columbia is oil rich, petrol is cheap — at least for now.
With Jakarta I see no visionary leaders and I have all but given up on Jakarta (known in our family as Chaos City) public transport’s ability to ever catch up with the rest of the world. So PakIvan, for goodness sake give us a vision, a real vision of sustainable public transport for Jakarta, something we can sell to visionary politicians — if there are any left.
Nairdah
Sydney
