Commuting by car in Jakarta can be costly, starting from monthly maintenance fees to high parking fees.

At shopping malls, hourly parking fees for cars stand at Rp 5,000 per hour (37 US cents), which can easily add up as malls are designed to make people stay for a long time.

So when Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama introduced the idea of converting a 8,710 square-meter plot of land previously owned by city-run Bank DKI on Jl. MH Thamrin, Menteng, Central Jakarta, into a park-and-ride facility with a low daily flat fee of Rp 5,000 late last year, the city administration was expecting car owners to park their vehicles there and then use public transportation to roam the capital.

Since starting its operation on Monday, however, fewer than 30 cars had been parked in the public facility, which is able to accommodate more than 250 medium-sized cars.

Salman, a parking attendant in charge of the facility, said only 26 cars had been parked on the site, with the facility recording the fewest number of cars on Wednesday.

Only one car had been parked there as of Wednesday afternoon.

“I’m sure some people still don’t know about this facility. Besides, today is a public holiday,” he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, only 10 cars were parked at the facility on Monday and 15 cars the following day during the facility’s operating hours of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Jakarta parking management unit spokesman Ivan Falentino admitted that a lack of promotion had greatly contributed to the low number of people using the facility, despite offering low parking fees.

He added that a tight promotion budget had his office resorting to only word-of-mouth advertising for the facility.

“The public facility is a non profit-oriented project. That’s why we haven’t allocated much money for promotion,” he told the Post on Wednesday.

Furthermore, the outdoor facility still uses manual ticketing instead of automatic parking ticket machines and has no parking lines to separate parking spaces.

“We will further develop it, including by installing automatic ticket machines and extending the operational hours, depending on public demand,” Ivan said.

The public facility is intended particularly for employees working around the site, which is known as a busy area.

However, people who want to travel around the city could also use the facility, added Ivan.

“People can park their car there and continue their travels on Transjakarta buses,” he said.

The nearest bus station is in front of the Sarinah shopping complex, less than 350 meters from the parking site.

The Jakarta Central Statistics Agency (BPS) in 2015 revealed that 2.43 million commuters traveled within, into and out of the city daily. Of the figures, 1.38 million traveled to the capital from satellite cities, which comprise Bogor, Bekasi and Depok in West Java and Tangerang and South Tangerang in Banten,

The survey revealed that 70 percent of commuters from Jakarta’s outskirts used private cars or motorcycles rather than public transportation when commuting into the city, thereby massively contributing to the city’s chronic congestion.

Based on the survey, 58 percent of commuters use motorcycles to get to Jakarta, 12.8 percent use cars and only 27 percent use public transportation.

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