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KCI eyes 1.5 million passengers per day in 2020
Limited accessibility: Manggarai railway station employees push two children on a wheelchair from one platform to another on Tuesday
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imited accessibility: Manggarai railway station employees push two children on a wheelchair from one platform to another on Tuesday. Train operator PT Kereta Commuter Indonesia (KCI), which operates the commuter line, aims to serve 1.5 million passengers per day in 2020.(JP/Ricky Yudhistira)
Serving as the backbone of railway transportation in Greater Jakarta, PT Kereta Commuter Indonesia (KCI), which operates the commuter line, plans to add more trips, trains and tracks in order to serve 1.5 million passengers per day in 2020.
In a discussion held last Friday, KCI president director Wiwik Widayanti said the company currently served up to 1 million passengers on 958 trips every day.
“Starting in December, we will provide 1,057 trips per day with 90 loops. We will also increase our capacity by gradually phasing out SF8 trains and adding more SF10 and SF12,” she told the press.
SF8, SF10 and SF12 are trains with eight, 10 and 12 cars, respectively. New trains will keep coming from Japanese train manufacturer JR East, with which the KCI has been bound to a train procurement partnership since 2018.
“With more trips and more SF10 and SF12 trains, not only will we be able to shorten our headways, we can also improve comfort because the train cars will be less cramped, particularly during rush hours,” Wiwik said.
The plan, she added, is stipulated in the 2019 Train Route Graphics (Gapeka), which should be implemented starting from December this year by all operators under state-owned PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) — including KCI as one of KAI’s subsidiaries.
The 2019 Gapeka was issued by the Transportation Ministry’s Railway Directorate General through Ministerial Decree No. KP.1781/2019.
As of October, the company had reached 81.13 percent of its 2019 target by serving a total of 278.71 million passengers, or an average of 916,799 passengers per day.
“We plan to operate feeder trains from our furthest stations and to reduce headways so that passengers will no longer have to wait too long,” Wiwik said.
“On the Rangkasbitung-Tanah Abang line, we will operate a feeder from Rangkasbitung to Parung. In Rangkasbitung, the headway is 30 minutes. Hence, once they reach Parung, passengers can switch to a train that will take them to Tanah Abang,” Wiwik added.
A feeder train will also be used on the Cikarang-Jakarta Kota line, where the headway is 1 hour. The feeder trains will operate between Cikarang and Bekasi stations.
This way, people from Cikarang can take the feeder trains, disembark at Bekasi station and continue their trip to Jakarta using another train on the Bekasi-Jakarta Kota line.
Wiwik, however, said the company had not yet decided when the feeder trains would start operating.
Besides making some changes to its operation, KCI has also completed renovation projects in several stations. It has built pedestrian underpasses at three stations — Duren Kalibata, Pasar Minggu and Depok — and revamped the toilets at 13 stations, including Cilebut, Kampung Bandan and Jurang Mangu.
In another effort to improve its service, KCI since 2018 has been operating a train simulator for train driver candidates to be trained and tested before they drive actual trains with real passengers.
KCI vice president of operations Broer Rizal said the simulator, which was produced in Bandung, West Java, was designed to have the exact same panel with controls functioning just as they did on a real train. The window is a screen that shows an animated version of scenery along the Bogor-Jakarta Kota line.
“We hope that, after undergoing a series of training sessions using the simulator, our drivers will be better prepared for their job and eventually provide a better service to our customers,” Broer said, noting that the company now had a total of 350 train drivers.
The simulator, he added, was also used to evaluate the senior drivers to ensure that they maintained their driving quality. Each of them must take the simulator test at least once per year.
Among the train driver candidates attending a class that Friday afternoon was 21-year-old R. Achmad Husein. Eight months ago, he flew all the way from his hometown in Palembang, South Sumatra, to join the training program managed by KAI.
Throughout the program, Husein said he and his fellow candidates had tried the simulator several times.
“Every session with the train simulator is always exciting, but it also makes us nervous at the same time,” he told The Jakarta Post.
“Sometimes the trainer challenges us by creating disturbances on our trip like suddenly turning the nice weather into a heavy storm, putting a car or a cow on the railway track in front of us. We’re expected to handle such conditions smoothly,” he excitedly explained.
Husein went on to say he joined the company because he wanted to make his parents proud for becoming part of a well-known state-owned company. He looked forward to working as a train driver for the commuter line.
