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60 buses pulled, others deployed
City-owned bus operator PT Transjakarta has assured commuters that the pulling of 60 of its buses from service following a fire earlier this week will not affect its services
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span>City-owned bus operator PT Transjakarta has assured commuters that the pulling of 60 of its buses from service following a fire earlier this week will not affect its services.
Transjakarta operational director Daud Joseph said the company had a sufficient number of spare buses to handle the situation.
“Our reserve buses are adequate to replace the ones currently pulled,” Daud told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
He said the buses pulled from service would resume operations once an investigation into the fire was completed and their roadworthiness assured.
A Transjakarta bus plying Corridor 3 from Kalideres in West Jakarta to Pasar Baru in Central Jakarta caught fire at 8:33 p.m. on Monday on Jl. Pos No. 2 in Pasar Baru, Sawah Besar, Central Jakarta.
No casualties were reported as all passengers exited the bus before it was engulfed by fire.
In response, Transjakarta technical and facilities director Wijanarko said the company had temporarily taken out of service 60 buses of the same brand as a precautionary measure.
Transjakarta president director Agung Wicaksono said the bus that caught fire and all the pulled buses were of the Hino brand and had been purchased in 2017.
“Their maintenance is taken care of by Hino ATPM [as the sole distributor]. We purchased [the buses] as well as their maintenance under a service contract,” he said, adding that Transjakarta conducted standard preoperation checks on all of its buses.
“We will first evaluate [all buses following the latest incedent]. We will use the police investigation as a point of reference for better future operation,” he said.
Separately, PT Hino Motors Sales Indonesia, the distributor of the Japanese brand vehicles, said Transjakarta’s pulled buses were still under investigation to check whether the fire had originated from the chassis, the body or the air conditioning.
“The investigation has just begun, so it’s a bit too early to say what caused the fire,” the company’s sales director, Santiko Wardoyo, told the Post on Thursday.
He said that, as the licensed distributor, the company had a one-year service contract with Transjakarta for the purchased buses, which could be extended annually.
The Jakarta Transportation Agency has also stepped in to investigate the cause of the fire and has asked the National Transportation Safety Committee for help.
“This is an accident, and we [want] preemptive and preventive measures, so we are reviewing this together [to see] if there’s anything to be fixed or improved,” acting Jakarta Transportation Agency head Sigit Wijatmoko said on Tuesday.
The incident is also being investigated by the National Police’s central forensic laboratory.
