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ity-owned bus operator PT Transportasi Jakarta (Transjakarta) will develop a smartphone application that lets passengers track the locations of drivers, so they can estimate a bus'€™ time of arrival at their current bus stop.

Transjakarta president director ANS Kosasih said the idea came after he met with Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama, Transportation Agency head Benjamin Bukit and representatives of Go-Jek mobile application company.

Go-Jek is a smartphone application where users can order an ojek (motorcycle taxi) to travel places or ask them to deliver goods from stores. Users can track their ojek drivers through the application with the global positioning system (GPS) function in the drivers'€™ smartphones.

'€œWe will cooperate with Go-Jek to develop an application where users can locate Transjakarta bus drivers who are on board, so that passengers can predict the time of arrival of the buses,'€ Kosasih told reporters at City Hall in Central Jakarta recently.

Thus far, Transjakarta bus drivers travel without a fixed schedule, making it difficult for passengers to get information when the next bus will arrive at their stop. During rush hour, in certain corridors, passengers wait up to an hour without certainty about when the bus will arrive.

'€œPassengers can'€™t get the [exact] arrival time of the buses, but at least they can predict it,'€ Kosasih said.

He said the Transjakarta smartphone application would use the same system as Go-Jek'€™s application. Through the application, he went on, passengers can also '€œrate'€ and comment on drivers to give feedback for Transjakarta to improve services. Such a function is also featured in the Go-Jek application.

'€œPassengers are also encouraged to rate our drivers. If we find that our drivers are driving recklessly or traveling too fast, then we will scold them. We often receive complaints of reckless driving but it'€™s difficult to pinpoint the exact driver,'€ Steve said.

Meanwhile, Ahok said the application would be part of the city'€™s wider implementation of the Jakarta Smart City program.

'€œThis will be part of our Smart City program. The application can later be viewed online as well in smartcity.jakarta.go.id,'€ the governor told reporters during the same occasion.

Jakarta Smart City currently has programs such as Qlue application for resident complaints, and petajakarta.org, which shows areas that are flooded using a map. The two are integrated in smartcity.jakarta.go.id along with a traffic map borrowed from real-time traffic application Waze.

'€œWe'€™re currently preparing an MoU [memorandum of understanding] between Transjakarta and Go-Jek for further cooperation,'€ Ahok said.

He went on to praise the app developers of Go-Jek and 30-year-old CEO Nadiem Makarim, calling it a creative innovation.

'€œGo-Jek is a very creative innovation and they also help existing ojek drivers in Jakarta. There are thousands of ojek drivers and thousands of passengers who use the application already,'€ he said.