M

arking its 488th anniversary, Jakarta recently saw the arrival of 20 buses produced by Swedish automotive company Scania, claimed to be among the best bus producers in the world. The new armada is no doubt a valuable birthday gift for the city and its citizens, who are fed up after a string of bus fires over the last few months.

The Scanias are among 51 buses PT Transportasi Jakarta (Transjakarta) will procure this year, according to the company president director, Antonius NS Kosasih.

Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama expressed his satisfaction with the Scania procurement, the first e to have utilized the e-catalogue mechanism, which is believed to minimize hanky-panky. '€œ[Old] bidding is a long process and is prone to corruption. I'€™m very happy that we finally purchased high quality buses through the e-catalogue,'€ Ahok said.

Credit should go to Ahok for his push for transparent procurement of goods and services within the Jakarta government, which has resulted in the purchase of these quality buses. Transjakarta, and the bus rapid transit (BRT) needs the new buses to improve both safety and convenience for its customers. Recent repeated fire accidents involving old Transjakarta buses underline the urgency of improvement in the quality of public buses plying the city'€™s 12 routes.

In the case of Jakarta, quantity is no less important than quality. Governor Ahok should not turn a blind eye to the shortage of Transjakarta buses that he and then governor Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo promised to address in their election campaigns back in 2012. Transjakarta needs more than just reliable and convenient buses to lure more people out of their private vehicles and on to public transportation.

A recent survey carried out by a Paramadina University discussion group between May 3 and May 29 spoke with 250 respondents who had monthly salaries above Rp 5 million (US$375) and worked in offices across Jakarta business districts along Jl. MH Thamrin, Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Rasuna Said. Just over 80 percent of them take their private vehicles to work.

Another survey shows that due to the serious lack of buses, Transjakarta is now less attractive than ever. The Jakarta Transportation Council (DTKJ) found that Transjakarta has not only failed to attract more passengers, but it has not even maintained its passenger numbers from 2011. According to the Council'€™s data, there were 34.1 million Transjakarta passengers between January and April this year, down 8.5 percent from 37.3 million last year.

A further study suggests that downward trend in Transjakarta'€™s passengers will be hard to curtail. Its total number of passengers hit a record 114.7 million in 2011, but since then has fallen to 111.4 million in 2012, 112.5 million in 2013 and 111.6 million in 2014.

The two studies corroborate claims of worsening traffic congestion in the recent years. It is a setback not only for Transjakarta, which started operations in January 2004, but also for the city administration which has been trying in vain to encourage people to use public transportation. As long as people still rely on their own vehicles for their daily transportation, Jakarta will continue to endure traffic chaos.

The question now is why did people stop taking Transjakarta? Part of the answer lies in the fact that Transjakarta is no longer exclusive because more and more motorists take up busway lanes despite the risk of being ticketed. The passengers can no longer rely on Transjakarta buses to reach their office on time. The isolation of busway lanes has been part of the effort to maintain good services of the BRT.

Another and more serious problem is the city administration'€™s failure to significantly increase the Transjakarta fleet.

Early last year Ahok pledged to purchase at least 1,000 buses for BRT corridors and 3,000 smaller buses for feeder services. Unfortunately, the budget allocated to buy the buses could not be disbursed due to corruption plaguing the procurement process.

Transjakarta controls about 800 buses '€” belonging to the city and a number of private operators, but more than 100 of them are in need of serious repair. Kosasih said that Transjakarta needs about 1,300 additional buses this year to ensure that its 12 corridors can operate optimally.

The city needs to learn from the state-owned railway operator PT KAI Jabodetabek to attract more passengers. With all of its efforts, including operation of more train cars and renovation of its stations, PT KAI Jabodetabek managed to boost its passenger numbers to 700,000 per day in late 2014 '€” more than 206 million per year '€” up from 500,000 per day in the previous year. The company has set its sights on transporting 1.2 million passengers per day by 2019.

In the coming years, Jakarta will still rely on Transjakarta and commuter trains as the backbone of its public transportation. Even if the 15.7 kilometer MRT project from Lebak Bulus to Hotel Indonesia is completed in 2018, Transjakarta will remain the most pivotal inner-city public transportation thanks to the wide coverage of its services.

Therefore, improvement of Transjakarta services is imperative. Reliable Transjakarta services are a precondition for the implementation of traffic restriction policies like electronic road pricing (ERP), license plate-based restriction schemes and the government'€™s plan to raise parking fees, which are all intended to discourage people from driving their vehicles.

Of course, the poor performance of the public transportation service is not merely the cause of the traffic gridlocks. Lack of discipline of road users, imbalanced ratio between the existing roads and the number of vehicles and bottlenecks resulting from street vendors who occupy pedestrian facilities also contribute to the traffic problems.

A shortcut to improve Transjakarta services is operating more buses. With the new buses arriving, the city administration should keep focusing on expanding the Transjakarta fleet in order to address traffic congestion. If they fail to do so, the downward trend of Transjakarta passengers will continue and the city'€™s traffic chaos will worsen.