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Jakarta to ban old cars amid pollution woes
How old is your vehicle now? Just a heads up: By 2025, Jakarta will no longer allow privately owned vehicles aged over 10 years on its roads
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span>How old is your vehicle now? Just a heads up: By 2025, Jakarta will no longer allow privately owned vehicles aged over 10 years on its roads. In the meantime, the city of more than 9 million people is weighing up the possibility of expanding the odd-even policy.
Those are among the drastic measures the Jakarta administration will take to fight its air pollution problem, which has reached dangerous levels and led to legal action against Governor Anies Baswedan.
The policies are outlined in a gubernatorial instruction released by Anies on Thursday, only hours after the first hearing of the first-ever civic lawsuit against the city and the government over worsening air quality.
The instruction states that the city administration will “tighten the vehicle emission test for privately owned vehicles starting 2019 and ensure that there are no privately owned vehicles more than 10 years old in Jakarta in 2025.”
Anies has ordered the transportation agency to start formulating a draft bylaw on the vehicle age limit for next year. This is, he said, to give residents a five-year transition period before the full implementation of the policy.
“We need to conduct corrective measures to make our air quality better. That requires cooperation from all stakeholders,” the governor said.
As an immediate policy, Anies said the city would likely expand the odd-even policy to reduce the number of vehicles on Jakarta’s roads.
“There will be a trial period just like the previous ones. Then, it will be fully enforced, most likely on Sept. 1,” he said, adding that the new odd-even policy would exclude those who use electric vehicles. “If you use electric vehicles, you won’t be affected by the policy.”
This is not the first time Jakarta has attempted to ban old privately owned vehicles. In 2005, a draft bylaw on air pollution control incorporated a similar policy, but it was shut down by the City Council, according to Committee for the Phasing Out of Leaded Fuel (KPBB) executive director Ahmad Safrudin.
“[The proposed article] was based on a civil society organization initiative filed through the environment agency, once called the Jakarta Environment Management Board,” Ahmad told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
Alfred Sitorus, also from the KPBB, expressed hope that the policy would go through this time. “Hopefully, there would be no parties saying this policy is not effective. It must start from now because we know there are a lot of old vehicles using old engines,” he said.
Alfred suggested that the policy should be carefully formulated and include incentives, such as allowing vehicle owners or the automotive industry to sell old cars as scraps. He also recommended disincentives, such as increasing taxes on old vehicles.
“Those who cause pollution must pay more,” he said.
Tory Damantoro, who leads the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Transportation Society, supported the policy, saying that it was better than other policies. “Limiting the age of vehicles will be more effective than emission testing that we have been striving to enforce since 1992,” he said.
Tory explained that a vehicle that is over 10 years old could still be used if its emissions met the standard stipulated by the Environment and Forestry Ministry. “However, old vehicles require more fuel compared to the new ones. Thus, they cause more pollution,” he added.
Shaumy Saribanon, 27, who commutes from Depok in West Java to Jakarta with her car, said she supported the idea for the sake of a healthier environment but wondered if she could afford to buy a new car.
“I agree with the idea if the reason is to improve the environment. It seems that public transportation in Jakarta is getting better and better. So in the future, I might not worry about traveling to the capital [by using public transportation],” she said.
“But what worries me is, I truthfully prefer to buy a second car.”
Satriya, 27, a resident of Kebagusan, South Jakarta, said he was hoping the city administration would not go through with the plan and suggested that the administration strictly adopt cleaner standards on exhaust emissions instead.
The government, he said, should require all vehicles in Jakarta to adopt the minimum Euro standard, such as Euro 4. This policy, he argued, was better than asking people to abandon their old cars.
“The implication of [the age limit rule] is demand for new cars would surge, but the engines remain the same. Therefore, wouldn’t air pollution still be a problem?”
