illions of Indonesians have begun hitting the road for the Christmas and New Year holidays, as authorities put policies in place for smooth and safe travel.
State-owned toll operator PT Jasa Marga said some 835,000 vehicles have left the Greater Jakarta area from Dec.18 to Sunday for the holidays.
Nearly half of them headed toward Bandung, a popular tourism destination in West Java, and the Trans-Java toll road network, the transportation backbone connecting Jakarta to Central and East Java.
Some 31 percent were headed to Merak Port in Banten, where people can catch a ferry to Sumatra, and 22 percent were headed to Puncak, a popular tourist destination in Bogor, West Java.
Authorities will apply counterflow lanes to anticipate congestion on certain stretches of the Jakarta-Cikampek and Jagorawi toll roads, the main routes for cars leaving the capital, from Dec. 24 to Dec. 29 and on Jan. 1, when Christmas and New Year travel is expected to surge.
While packed with cars, traffic along the country’s main toll roads have generally remained smooth, barring a couple of incidents along less traveled routes.
On Monday afternoon, a bus collided with an ambulance along the Pandaan-Malang toll road, an off-shoot of the Trans-Java toll that connects Pasuruan regency to Malang city in East Java. According to Jasa Marga, the incident caused some congestion as the flipped-over bus had blocked the toll lanes.
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