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Govt calls for earlier trips in anticipation of ‘mudik’ congestion
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Travelers board a train at Tasikmalaya Station, West Java, on April 5. Two weeks ahead of Idul Fitri, people traveling from Tasikmalaya to the provincial capital Bandung, and vice versa, accounted for the largest proportion of passengers at the station. (Antara/Adeng Bustomi)
T
he government is urging holidaymakers to start traveling to their hometowns earlier in hopes of avoiding widespread traffic congestion during the upcoming Idul Fitri holiday, which is expected to be the biggest mudik (exodus) season since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said recently that the government was now wrapping up its preparations for this year’s mudik season, with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo expected to conduct the final checks next week.
With over 123 million Indonesians expected to make homebound journeys this year, including 18 million from the Greater Jakarta area alone, it is expected that this year will be the biggest mudik season in recent years.
This year’s figure is also a 47 percent increase from the number of holiday-goers last year. It is the first time that people are physically allowed to do so since the start of the pandemic in 2020 when some 85 million people nationwide traveled to their hometowns for the mudik.
Budi said one of the government’s main strategies heading into the Idul Fitri holidays was to encourage holidaymakers to start traveling to their hometowns as early as April 13, in order to help alleviate congestion on April 19 and 20 when the peak of the homebound travel is expected to happen.
“If [the public] could arrange to start their homebound journeys before April 19, their cars could travel [at a faster pace]. If they start traveling on April 19, the top vehicle speed would only be at 40 kilometers per hour,” Budi said, as quoted by kompas.id. According to Budi, the normal five-hour trip between Jakarta to Semarang, Central Java, could take up to 10 hours if it was made during the peak of this year’s mudik season.
Read also: More people expected to 'mudik' this year
