T

he recent additions to the Transjakarta fleet have resulted in no significant improvements, passengers and employees say.

Esti Widayanti, a regular passenger on the 2A route said that even though some buses had been added to improve the route, she still had to wait for a long time as there was no schedule.

The 2A route connects Bundaran Senayan in Central Jakarta and Pulo Gadung in East Jakarta.

'€œI can wait for up to 30 minutes at Galur bus stop [East Jakarta],'€ Esti said.

The head of the Transjakarta Management Authority, Pargaulan Butarbutar, said that before Transjakarta became a city-owned company, the city administration had added 108 buses, which were deployed proportionally to the 12 corridor network.

Esti said that even when a bus arrived, it was usually uncomfortably full and drivers were often reluctant to wait for alighting and boarding passengers.

'€œSometimes, the bus driver will just drive away in a rush,'€ she added.

The underlying problem, Esti said, was not the number of buses on the route but rather the attitude of other motorists that illegally used the dedicated bus lane.

A barrier attendant at Galur bus stop who asked for anonymity, said that the 2A route'€™s buses were slow and Transjakarta had yet to set a fixed schedule because of the city'€™s chaotic '€” and unpredictable '€” traffic.

He said that five new buses had begun to ply the route since January.

'€œYou can see the unruly traffic at Cempaka Mas, four stops from here, especially during peak hours. Private cars and motorcycles use the Transjakarta lane; holding up the buses,'€ he said.

The attendant added that if the buses were equipped with GPS, passengers could be informed of an estimated waiting time.

Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) Indonesian chapter director Yoga Adiwinarto said that Transjakarta had begun to improve its service, including bus frequency, although no fixed schedule had been set.

When asked about the main obstacle the company was facing, Yoga said that the recent faulty bus scandal had not only hindered efforts to improve services but would also likely land Transportation Agency officials in prison due to their alleged involvement in the bus-procurement graft case.

The Jakarta administration, with Rp 5 trillion (US$443 million) from the City'€™s budget, planned to procure more than 4,000 buses from China to bolster the Transjakarta fleet. However, when the first butch of buses arrived in February, some of them showed faulty components, including rusty bolts, missing fan belts and shattered dashboards.

While the new management, with Steve Kosasih as president director, is designing a strategy to achieve significant progress, the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) has already named two Transportation Agency officials suspects in its investigation into the graft case. After questioning former agency head Udar Pristono on Monday, the AGO on Wednesday also confiscated several faulty buses as evidence.

Deputy Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama once said there were suspicious irregularities in the tendering of the bus procurement project and a markup during the procurement: An articulated bus was bought for Rp 3 billion while its normal price was only around Rp 1 billion. (dyl)