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oll road operators said that in spite of increasing tolls, they could do little else to reduce congestion on the roads.

“Traffic congestion is a complex issue, it involves problems with infrastructure, the growth in the number of cars as well as the lack of public transportation. Jasa Marga and toll road operators should not be responsible for all of this,” the chairman of the Indonesian Toll Road Operators Association, Fatchur Rochman, said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

Starting Oct. 7, commuters in Greater Jakarta have to spend between Rp 500 (5 US cents) and Rp 2,500 to travel on the city’s network of toll roads, after Jasa Marga raised its tolls based on the Sept. 27 public works ministerial decree, which stipulates price increases for 12 toll roads nationwide, seven of which are in Jakarta.

Congestion on some of the city’s toll roads has extended to outside of the rush hour period. A number of tollgates in downtown Jakarta have also contributed to congestion in the city, with cars lining up to pay tolls.

Jasa Marga operations director, Adityawarman, said toll roads were not the only solution for traffic problems in the capital.

“There are about 2,000 new cars every day. Let’s say 30 percent of these cars enter toll roads, we will definitely have congestion. This growth cannot not be matched with the length of the road,” he said.

However, Adityawarman said that toll road operators would make efforts to ease congestion.

“We have an e-Toll card system, which takes only around two or three seconds for motorists to make the payment at the tollgate,” he said.

State toll road operator Jasa Marga and state-owned Bank Mandiri have developed an electronic system that allows motorists to pay tolls within three seconds. The manual system takes up to eight seconds per vehicle.

Jasa Marga expects that the new system could help ease congestion at tollgates.

Adityawarman said that only 9 percent of total toll road users had e-Toll cards,

“We set a target of increasing the number of e-Toll road users to 30 percent by 2014,” he said.

He said that now there were only 80 tollgates that had e-Toll card readers. The tollgates can be found on Jakarta’s inner ring road, outer ring road, Cikampek and Jagorawi. “We plan to add more e-Toll card readers commensurate with the growth in the number of its users.”

Adityawarman said that so far the new system was the only practical technology capable of reducing congestion at tollgates. “It also helps us a lot because we’ve been having trouble giving small change.”

Jasa Marga is looking into the possibilities of using technology that would allow transactions without motorists having to stop at tollgates.

The company has also made efforts to improve services, including connecting the whole Jakarta Outer Ring Road (JORR) by constructing the Ulujami–Kebon Jeruk section.

JORR is a seven-section toll road encircling Jakarta, spanning 65 kilometers. About 78 percent of the road has been completed.

Jasa Marga has also recently completed a project to widen the Jagorawi and Kebon Jeruk–Tangerang toll roads.

Other toll road operators said that discipline among road users could also help ease congestion on toll roads.

Wiwiek D. Santoso, executive director of PT Marga Mandala Sakti, the Tangerang-Merak toll road operator, said that toll road users still needed education.

“It is very important for all drivers to abide by the rules, They should not break the speed limit and always return to their lanes after overtaking others. It could reduce the number of accidents as well,” she said. (swd)