L

ike it or not, Jakarta'€™s motorists must face facts: Road lanes will close to allow the construction of the 15.7-kilometer MRT.

One lane near the Hotel Indonesia (HI) traffic circle on Jl. M H Thamrin in Central Jakarta has been closed since late January and more will follow to assist the ongoing MRT project, which will stretch from Lebak Bulus in South Jakarta to the HI traffic circle and is slated to be finished within four years.

Unfortunately, the city'€™s other mass transportation project '€” the Transjakarta busway, which has been an ongoing project for the last 10 years, has not convinced motorists to switch to public transportation because it fails to offer either a reliable or convenient service.

'€œI gave up riding the Transjakarta two months ago. It was too crowded, it made me so tired and it affected my concentration at work,'€ a resident of Pejaten, South Jakarta, said. '€œDriving was similarly exhausting. Now I take an ojek [motorcycle taxi],'€ said the employee who works in Palmerah, Central Jakarta.

So for now, at least, commuters have no better choice.

Back when the busway was first introduced by then governor Sutiyoso in 2004, he and transportation experts predicted that if people'€™s dependency on private transportation was not reduced the city would be in a state of total traffic gridlock by this year.

Their prediction that motorists would only move meters from their homes before being trapped in congestion has not exactly come true. However, complaints of longer waiting times in traffic jams have increased, which is down to the growth in the number of cars and motorcycles being notoriously unequal to road growth.

In trying to reduce the impact of lane closures, the Jakarta city administration has introduced several measures, such as directing motorists to find alternative roads and improving public transportation.

Last week, Governor Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo launched a new Transjakarta route, connecting housing complex Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) in North Jakarta to the Monas Transjakarta bus stop in Central Jakarta, to encourage the well-off to take public transportation. It was one of the 20 Transjakarta routes to be opened to connect plush residences to existing busway lanes.

It sounds good.

However, these new routes just connect the residential areas to downtown, which would unlikely meet their needs. Therefore, expecting the rich to shift to public transportation is unlikely to reap results any time soon.

Therefore, the only way to ease the daily gridlock is to upgrade Transjakarta'€™s services.

Governor Jokowi may need to carry out blusukan (impromptu visits) to Harmoni Central Busway (HCB) in Central Jakarta to see what passengers have to go through daily: The condition of this transit point may represent the services in general as it serves passengers from nearly all corridors.

There, he would see hundreds of people standing for up to one hour before boarding buses. An officer on duty said she and her friends had to go to the nearby shopping center '€” some five minutes on foot from HCB '€” if they needed to use rest rooms. She said she often guided passengers asking to do the same thing.

After eventually boarding, many passengers are forced to stand due to overcrowding. One passenger shared her experience on Facebook and described how people had to push onto the already overcrowded buses. As a recent stroke victim, she said she had to get off at the next stop.

The founders of Transjakarta expected that it would be as successful as the bus rapid transit (BRT) in Colombia'€™s capital city of Bogota, the TransMilenio, which opened in December 2000. It managed to change the image of what was once a second-class mode of transportation into one that motorists were happy to leave their cars at home for.

Transjakarta has the potential to be successful. Currently, it has 12 corridors connecting major parts of the city, with three others to be developed.

It is the job of the current city administration to change this potential into a real solution to overcome the gridlock. Thus, the city has reportedly allocated Rp 4.64 trillion (US$392.19 million) from this year'€™s budget to purchase some 1,000 large- and 3,000 medium-sized buses to be feeder vehicles to transport passengers to residential areas.

In the coming months, however, the MRT project will mean that motorists and other road users must make sacrifices: Prepare for worsening traffic jams because even if the bus procurement process takes place smoothly, they will not likely be delivered until later in the year.

Hopefully, our sacrifices will be equally compensated when Jakarta finally has its MRT.

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.