City wants explanation from govt on toll road plan

The Jakarta administration has demanded the central government explain its recently announced plan to build a new elevated toll road connecting Cibubur in East Jakarta and Senayan in Central Jakarta.

City administration secretary Fadjar Panjaitan said on Friday that he had no knowledge of the plan.

“We haven’t been informed of this plan. This is new to me,” Fadjar told reporters at the City Hall.

Asked whether the plan would violate the city’s long-term spatial plan, the top official said the administration would first need to study the project.

“If the plan does not violate Jakarta’s spatial plan, then I don’t see why it cannot be executed. However, until we know for certain, we cannot say anything about it,” he said.

Last week, State-Owned Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan said that the central government had been discussing a plan to construct a 23-kilometer Cibubur-Senayan elevated toll road, which would be operated using a contraflow arrangement.

Dahlan said that the toll road was expected to reduce morning and afternoon traffic jams between the two areas by 30 and 20 percent, respectively.

“If approved, the project will not need to be auctioned, because this is an initiative by state-owned toll road operator PT Jasa Marga,” Dahlan said last week as quoted by Kompas daily.

The minister said that the project’s value was unknown as it was still under development, with plans for completion within two years.

“Engineering technology has enabled us to build elevated toll roads without having to disturb traffic in the same area,” Dahlan said.

Jasa Marga operations director Hasanudin said separately that the company would cooperate with state-owned construction companies PT Adhi Karya and PT Wijaya Karya on the planned project.

He explained that when operated, the new toll road would employ a rotating one-way direction. It will open for traffic heading downtown between 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. and the next 12 hours it will serve traffic in the opposite direction. The company is planning five entrance and exit points to the toll road, three in the eastern part of Jakarta and two in the downtown area.

In an attempt to provide more road space in Jakarta, the administration is also planning construction on six elevated inner-city toll roads.

Jakarta has 7,650 kilometers of road that expands by only 0.01 percent annually.