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ransportation observers have again raised concerns over the safety of the Transjakarta bus rapid transport service after another bus burst into flames while carrying dozens of passengers.

In the latest incident, a Transjakarta bus connecting Blok M to Kota, with around 40 passengers on board, caught fire near the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle on Saturday. No one was injured in the incident, but the bus was completely gutted.

The fire started at around 12:45 p.m. when smoke appeared at the back of the bus. The driver stopped in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and evacuated all the passengers. The bus burned rapidly, although eight units of firefighters were dispatched to contain the fire.

Critics point the finger at the aging Transjakarta fleet as the main cause of the fires. Elen Tangkudung from the Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) urged the Jakarta administration and the TransjakartaManagement Authority (BLU) to replace buses that have been operating since Transjakarta’s inception in 2004.

“They should change some buses because they have reached the end of their operational lifespan. New buses should replace those that have been operating on Corridor 1 for seven or eight years,” Elen said.

The city administration and the BLU, he added, should not simply repair old or run down buses.

“Many buses serving Corridor 1 are beyond their operational life-span because they have been operating for more than seven years.”

In less than a year, Elen said, more than 10 Transjakarta buses had caught fire. This called for a thorough evaluation of the quality of the buses to ensure that they met safety standards, he explained.

On Feb. 12 this year, another Transjakarta bus plying the Blok M-Kota route caught fire near Sarinah in Central Jakarta.

In December last year, a Trans-jakarta bus serving the Kalideres-Harmony route was burned out on Jl. Daan Mogot, West Jakarta.

In the previous month, a Transjakarta bus connecting Ancol and Kampung Melayu caught fire on Jl. Jatinegara Barat, East Jakarta. On Aug. 1, a bus plying the Kalideres-Harmoni route was burned out in Grogol, West Jakarta.

BLU chief Muhammad Akbar said on Sunday that his office was still investigating the cause of the fire.

“We have to carry out a thorough investigation before discovering the cause of the fire,” he said.

Akbar said that the fire might have been triggered by a short circuit, as had happened in many cases of bus fires. “Sometimes such accidents just happen, no matter how good our preparations are,” he added.

According to Akbar, around 500 Transjakarta buses plying 11 routes around the capital are carefully checked before serving passengers and after returning to their pools.

“If we spot something is wrong with a bus, we will not let it out of the pool to pick up passengers,” he said. “We check the tires, the brakes, the air conditioners and the gas fuel tanks. Every two weeks, we also service the buses entire systems to maintain their reliability.”

Elen said the operator should solve the problem as soon as possible as such incidents would discourage passengers who relied on the Transjakarta service.

With a total length of 184.31 kilometers and connectivity throughout all municipalities, the Transjakarta service carried 120 million passengers last year. (riz)