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n an attempt to alleviate the city’s severe and extensive traffic problem, the central government is planning to set up a special body dubbed the Greater Jakarta Transportation Authority (OTJ).

The Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister’s Jakarta urban transportation policy integration project head Amalia Aldian said Wednesday that the central government was currently designing a transportation master plan for Jakarta and its satellite areas.

“We expect to complete the design by the end of the year and later set up the OTJ through a presidential decree,” Aldian said during a discussion hosted by the Indonesian Transportation Community (MTI) in Central Jakarta.

He said the OTJ would be headed by a chief who would directly report to the President. “The central government will delegate authority from ministries, government bodies and regional administrations,” Aldian said.

Among the kinds of authority being considered to be given to the OTJ are to authorize and issue permits on transportation-related matters, with facilities and support from the regional administrations of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi.

During the discussion, José Antonio Gómez-Ibáñez from Harvard University said the central government was right to establish the OTJ.

“Greater Jakarta has the fastest growing population in the country, resulting in a more complicated network of commuting corridors,” said Gómez-Ibáñez, who has done research in Jakarta.

He stressed that a key problem in establishing such a special body was how much power the government should give it and how the government planned to manage the body.

“More power to the OTJ will mean more opposition from regional administrations, ministries and other state institutions.”

But, he said it was important for the OTJ to have substantial authority beyond only planning and consultation.

“At the least, the OTJ should possess the power to authorize bus routes, which supercedes the local governments, and also to have transit system operators report to it,” he said.

Gómez-Ibáñez said Jakarta would not be able to build its way out of the traffic problem and should instead utilize the existing infrastructure and manage the current transit modes more efficiently.

“The planned Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) is costly, only catering to a small part of the demand with such a big investment,” he said.

The MRT is expected to cater to between 200,000 and 300,000 passengers a day, with the first 15.5-kilometer route requiring Rp 14.4 trillion (US$1.7 billion).

The OTJ is one of the 17 + 3 policies proposed by Vice President Boediono last year to alleviate Jakarta’s maddening traffic.

Other policies include the planned electronic road pricing (ERP), more Transjakarta routes and a program to clear Transjakarta lanes of private vehicles, the development of commuter train routes in Greater Jakarta, the prioritization of the MRT and the development of the Jakarta inner-ring railroad and six new inner-city toll roads.