“Honestly… [Jakarta] is no longer ideal,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono  said while calling for an extraordinary solution to the problem of Greater Jakarta.

He added there was no longer a balance in the ratio between people and their surrounding environment.

Speaking at a meeting with chief and senior editors of national media at the State Palace on Wednesday night, the President said the complications posed by the rapid growth of Jakarta were complex.

The number of motor vehicles, for example, rose 10 to 15 percent annually, compared to the number of new roads which, according to Yudhoyono, amounted to a miniscule 0.01 percent per year.

Other problems include population density and drainage issues.

With traffic in many parts of the capital coming to an inefficient standstill, the central government has begun taking steps to seek alternatives.

Without elaborating, the President said he has been absorbing as much information as possible in the last three months and working with a small team to look at the various alternatives.

He described this initiative as a “historic opportunity”.

But rather than taking a bold decision to endorse one particular resolution, the President instead forwarded three differing proposals for debate which he said needed a national consensus.

While the first option was simply maintaining the status quo and introducing a slew of new alternative mass transport options and highways, the second and third required a physical move to new cities.

One called for the construction of a new capital, such as Brasilia, Canberra or The Hague, leaving Jakarta to be a center of commerce alone.

The other alternative was for the construction of a new government center, with Petaling Jaya in Malaysia as the example.

This way the center of government would be focused on this new township, while the city of Jakarta would remain the center of commerce and capital city like that of Kuala Lumpur.

“The challenge is great,” the President remarked while stressing that once a decision had been
taken it should be “bold with a strategic plan”.

“There can be no short term patchwork policies.”

According to  Yudhoyono, Petaling Jaya was constructed at a cost of about Rp 80 trillion.

“Financing doesn’t all have to come from the government. There can be private sector partnerships
as well,” he added without going into detail.

In his mind, once started this project would consume the better part of a decade or even more with construction taking about five to six years, and the supporting infrastructure about two or three years.

While he did not indicate any specific location, the President said centrality would be important.

“But centrality does not necessarily mean geographically central,” he said.

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