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Govt braces for ongoing traffic peak as holiday ends
The government has projected this weekend will see the second peak of vehicles returning to Jakarta from various regions as people end their extended Idul Fitri leave
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he government has projected this weekend will see the second peak of vehicles returning to Jakarta from various regions as people end their extended Idul Fitri leave.
The extended leave from June 11 to 21 coincided with a long school holiday.
As the Idul Fitri leave had ended, the government previously predicted that return mudik (exodus) traffic would peak on Tuesday and Wednesday.
A total of 11.06 million people nationwide went to their respective hometowns from eight days before Idul Fitri, which fell on June 15, until the second day of the holiday, data from the Transportation Ministry show. However, only 4.9 million of those people had returned as of Thursday.
The ministry concluded that 55.61 percent of people have not returned from their hometowns.
Of the people who have yet to return from their hometowns, the majority travelled by land.
Despite a prediction of peak traffic, the weekend would still see fewer vehicles than the first peak period earlier this week, said Budi Setiyadi, the ministry’s director general for land transportation.
“It may not be like that [traffic congestion],” he told The Jakarta Post on Friday when asked whether there would be any congestion this weekend. “People may not come back yet because of the regional elections.”
As many as 171 regions will hold regional elections simultaneously on June 27, prompting people to extend their leave so they can vote in their hometowns.
As of Thursday afternoon, state toll road operator Jasa Marga had recorded 30,000 vehicles passing the main Cikarang Utama tollgate, which connects Jakarta and other nearby cities such as Bekasi, West Java. The number of vehicles passing the tollgate was 21 percent higher than on regular days, with the peak at the end of the day predicted to hit 104,000 vehicles.
However, the traffic volume on Thursday was still lower than the peak on Tuesday and Wednesday, which saw 130,000 vehicles and 124,000 vehicles, respectively.
Budi predicted fewer vehicles would pass the Cikarang Utama tollgate on the weekend as people might fear heavy congestion. However, the ministry, along with the police, will still conduct extra traffic management on major toll roads, including Jakarta-Cikampek and Cikopo-Palimanan in West Java.
“The pattern is the same [as on other peak days]; it will be adjusted to the demand,” he said. “There can be a dynamic and permanent contraflow as well as one-way [traffic management].”
Jasa Marga has announced a contraflow traffic system starting at 4:30 p.m. on the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road, for the lane heading to Jakarta in its effort to ease the congestion.
Budi said there might be another one-way traffic system applied on either Saturday or Sunday, such as was applied on toll roads such as Cikopo-Palimanan on Wednesday.
Greater Jakarta Transportation Body (BPTJ) head Bambang Prihartono concurred with the idea, saying the government would prioritize incoming traffic for major cities.
“During the outflow traffic, we prioritize people going out. When it’s time for [people] to come back, we prioritize return traffic,” he said, expecting that the traffic burden would be split between national roads.
A similar pattern of peak return traffic this weekend is also expected for sea transport, said Chandra Irawan, the Transportation Ministry’s director of sea traffic and transport. The ministry would monitor and increase supervision at 52 ports, which would see a surge in passengers, he said.
From 15 days before the Idul Fitri holiday up until Friday, 2.4 million people had used sea transportation, the ministry noted.
As for air transportation, 1.2 million flight passengers at 36 airports were recorded during the return traffic period up until June 20. The figure is lower than the 2.8 million passengers that went away during the mudik period.
Djoko Murjatmodjo, operational director of Angkasa Pura II (AP II), said his company was anticipating a surge in passengers this weekend despite projecting that the number would not surge too high.
State airport operator AP II, the operator of 13 airports in Indonesia, welcomed around 211,000 people at the main Soekarno Hatta International Airport on June 20, the highest number so far.
