TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Delay of additional busway routes criticized
An announcement made by Governor Fauzi Bowo on Monday that the construction of TransJakarta busway corridors 11 and 12 will be delayed by a year until 2012 has been met with stern criticism
Change Size
A
n announcement made by Governor Fauzi Bowo on Monday that the construction of TransJakarta busway corridors 11 and 12 will be delayed by a year until 2012 has been met with stern criticism.
Chairman of the Indonesian Transportation Society, Danang Parikesit, said if the two corridors were delayed until 2012, "the impact of congestion will be bigger by then".
The society, he said, had expected corridors 11 and 12 would be completed by 2011. Corridor 11 would connect Kampung Melayu and Pulo Gebang in East Jakarta, and Corridor 12 would connect Pluit and Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta.
Danang told The Jakarta Post that the average speed of motorized vehicles in the city was 10-15 kilometers per hour, and that this figure would soon decrease to 8-13 kilometers per hour due to worsening traffic congestion.
He said the construction of the TransJakarta bus network had already taken too long. It took eight years to build the existing eight corridors. The head of the City Council's Commission B overseeing transportation, Selamat Nurdin, also said he was disappointed by the announcement.
"The development of TransJakarta has taken a lot from the city budget. I think the units in charge of the project are too careful *in their works*, which slows down the project," he told the Post.
He was referring to the bidding process to procure buses for corridors 9 (connecting Pluit in North Jakarta and Pinang Ranti in East Jakarta) and 10 (connecting Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta and Cililitan in East Jakarta), which was delayed several times due to a lack of bidders.
Earlier, Governor Fauzi shifted the blame for the delay onto his predecessor's administration.
"How can I accelerate the procurement of buses and other affairs while the operational contract is not in place," Fauzi said recently.
He was referring to the contract between the Jakarta administration and the bus operators, which did not exist when the busway was launched in 2004.
He named other problems, including a lack of guidelines for the busway operators to deliver a minimum standard of service, a ceiling for a per kilometer tariff that the administration should pay to operators and the need for a standard ticketing system for the busway.
