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fter Brexit in the UK and another closer to home during the Idul Fitri holiday, it seems like the world hasn’t quite had enough.

There was another Islamic State (IS) movement attack on France’s national day, with a third of victims found to be Muslims. The Turkish military attempted to overthrow the authoritarian yet democratically elected President Erdogan. Donald Trump was officially crowned as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee a day after his wife’s speech was proven to have been partially plagiarized from Michelle Obama in 2008.

Don’t you wish now that you’d hitched a ride to Jupiter with NASA Juno as it started its journey five years ago? Yeah.

Anyway, we can wallow in mutual misery, or try to catch something new on the horizon, something that may just bring better things into our daily lives. I’ve done my fair share of the first, so I’m doing the latter this week. Ready to be positive?

The administration of Jakarta is again throwing around another experiment to curtail the city’s notorious traffic jams. As one can easily surmise, the root of the problem is a terrible mass public transportation system that pushes commuters to own private vehicles. The sidewalks are so patchy, many prefer a three-minute vehicle ride than a brisk 15-minute walk.

The ones who can afford cars strive to own at least one. The ones who live barely above minimum wage sometimes forego meals to afford 36-month installments on a motorbike, a vehicle that can’t even shield one from the weather yet is still more practical than maneuvering around on public transportation routes.

The MRT is coming along, but the initial lines to operate within one-two years will be simple, so something needs to be done in the meantime. Hence, the plan to regulate entrance into Jakarta’s main downtown thoroughfares during rush hours on workdays to substitute the years-long, ineffective three-passengers-in-a-car rule. The cars with license plates ending with an odd number can only enter on odd dates, while the ones ending with an even number are allotted even dates. The argument goes that commuters will be incentivized ride on mass transportation or carpool.

I’m a firm believer that a real change in habits requires incentives. What are the incentives for private car owners in this scheme now? Without drastic changes in availability, service and convenience by the time this policy is rolled out, the only incentive is the feel-good sentiment knowing that you’ve somewhat contributed to reducing traffic problems. Noble, yes. Sustainable?

After experiencing the daily frustration of hailing taxis every morning or during the rain, or how carpooling doesn’t work out as well when you have gym or grocery shopping after work, or once you start factoring in fragile kids and aging parents in a daily morning timetable — I doubt it is.

So people will start cheating the system. How? Not that difficult, really. People who own only one car can rent, lease or buy a second car with the opposite type of license plate number, or sell their car altogether to buy two cheaper cars. Will it be a burden to their budget? Yes. Is it impossible to achieve, especially with the easy car loan schemes around? No.

People who own more than one car with the same type of license plate number can swap or sell one car. People who own more than one car with both types of license plate numbers won’t even need to alter their arrangements.

Heck, Uber may even consider altering their app to match license plates with assigned dates.

And those are just the legal way-outs. Who’s willing to bet that the fake license plates business won’t enjoy a little boon now?

I ran a semi-scientific poll among my networks. After weeding out two respondents who don’t commute to Jakarta’s main thoroughfares on weekdays, I got a few dozen valid responses. Two-thirds of respondents own one car, and 60 percent (40 percent of total respondents) claimed they’ll take public transportation or carpool on days not allotted to their car.

Of the respondents owning more than one car, a whopping 80 percent (26.7 percent of the total) happen to own cars with both types of license plates. If I were to use my small survey as a relaxed projection, the new scheme may alter riding habits of at least 40 percent of the population, but not more than 73.3 percent of private car owners.

Not a shabby projection. Provided that respondents will continuously behave in the long run as they answered in a quick poll, that the income level of respondents owning one car doesn’t rise before public transportation modes are much improved, and a myriad of other things.

A market researcher pal wryly commented that my poll results were too optimistic. I replied that I was looking for a reason to be optimistic at the get go, hence a bit of bias. And I bet that’s also what’s on the mind of the Jakarta administration in launching this initiative. It doesn’t make them more optimistic than previous administrations launching earlier initiatives. It doesn’t make them more prone to success either.

Yet in the meantime, we’re allowed to feel a tad bit more positive looking into the horizon. For a girl who lives downtown, works mostly from home yet owns a car, I’ve certainly got a lot of positive business propositions now. La, la, la.
 
Lynda Ibrahim is a Jakarta-based writer with a penchant for purple, pussycats and pop culture.