Long, winding road to viable transportation system

The Jakarta Post, Tuesday, April 25, 2006

There was a time when a day off meant more than a day on the couch. There were errands to catch up on and friends to catch up with. An opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of a matinee or perhaps time to visit that new art exhibition. Those days have long since gone. Now the only place I want to spend my day off is on the couch, catching up on my PlayStation. I wasn’t always a couch potato; it took years of suffering through Jakarta’s horrific traffic jams to make me the kind of person who only ventures out of the house for work, and perhaps medical emergencies.

I once read Jakarta has one of the most comprehensive transportation systems on the planet. True, it’s a city where four wheels are considered better than two legs.

Walking gets you nowhere but dabbing your head with a hanky, while everyone else stares at you like you just came down from the trees.

The city administration, it seems, understands this and subtly (or not) discourages walking by declining to provide basic facilities like pedestrian bridges and, I don’t know, sidewalks. Most people have probably noticed, as they stared out their car window during the interminable traffic jam known as the daily commute, that most streets in the city don’t have sidewalks, or if they do have sidewalks they have been overtaken by trees and bushes or, that’s right, sidewalk vendors. Except of course the main thoroughfares of Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Thamrin, which seems to me a blatant attempt to fool visitors and business travelers into believing that Jakarta is a city of sidewalks; clean, wide, passable sidewalks that would be at home along the streets of any Western city.

Not to worry, there is always public transportation. In fact, there is a veritable smorgasbord of public transportation choices, from big and box-like to sleek and fast (well, not really sleek and usually not particularly fast, because we’re still talking about Jakarta).

Large air-conditioned buses drop people off in the heart of the city from their homes in Bekasi, Tangerang, Bogor and Depok — where the three-wheeled becak can still be found in some areas.

From there, they can either take a smaller bus — one of the metrominis or kopajas — or the latest in mass rapid transit, the busway, to their ultimate destination.

The city’s 40,000-plus taxis are in furious competition with each other for the privilege of taking you door-to-door. I suppose this competition could explain why so many taxi drivers seem to work 48 hours straight, and are ready to nod off at a moment’s notice. Sleep tight, fair driver. I will watch the road ahead while you enjoy your much-deserved rest.

Or it you don’t mind the clamor, take the cheaper three-wheeled bajaj, while they are still allowed on the streets.

In a hurry for an important meeting? Beat the traffic with the ubiquitous ojek (motorcycle taxi), because some meetings are worth dying for. That’s not entirely fair. I know several people who have taken ojek and lived to tell the tale (unfortunately they told the tale from a hospital bed, in full-body casts).

Up north, one can still find bicycle taxis, not as quick as the motorcycles, but much safer amid the ruthless North Jakarta traffic.

Oh, and don’t forget the trains, which complement the large buses in transporting people from Jakarta’s suburbs into the city. Dirt cheap and, well, dirty, Jakarta’s trains are nearly always early or late. Still, the trains are the only way to travel for the majority of commuters who enter the capital each day.

Vegetable sellers rub shoulders with white-collar workers, traveling the 80 kilometers from Rangkas Bitung in West Java to Jakarta for a mere Rp 1,500 (about 16 US cents). It’s by far the cheapest, and fastest, mode of transportation around.

Maybe it’s true after all, Jakarta has one of the most comprehensive transportation systems in the world. And when the construction of the monorail — and the subway — wraps up, the choices will be complete.

So with all these transportation options, why do people still prefer to drive their own cars?

The answer, of course, is comfort and safety, the two things none of our modes of public transportation are able to offer (not even the ojek).

Public buses and trains teem with pickpockets, who sometimes branch out to minivans.

Crowded carriages become even more so as vendors squeeze between passengers, hawking their wares.

Even the new busway system has lost some of the comfort that was its claim to fame two years ago. Not enough buses on the new routes means masses of people crushed together at the busway shelters. And while the busway does help you escape the traffic on normal days, it too falls victim to demonstrations and rain, when flooded streets shut down much of the city’s transportation system.

We can always hope the monorail and subway will make a difference, getting people out of their cars and breaking the traffic gridlock. Until that happens, I’ll be on the couch with my PlayStation.

Firm offers insurance for vehicle owners parking in public places

The Jakarta Post, Thursday April 13, 2006

Read the fine print on a ticket issued by any parking company in the city, and it’s clear that, apart from the steep charge, there is next to nothing offered in terms of security for the vehicle.
Beginning next week, however, customers will have the option to participate in a new insurance scheme for their vehicles.

“We want to help those who cannot afford the hefty premium on car insurance, because vehicle owners are really at a disadvantage in parking lots,” PT Bumi Artha Sukses Mandiri president Heron Rubianto said Wednesday.

The insurance company has introduced Artha Parking Insurance, providing all-risk insurance for parked vehicles — including clauses on damage sustained in riots and personal accidents for two people — of up to Rp 100 million (about US$11,000) for cars and Rp 15 million for motorcycles.

Heron said the insurance was first offered for companies wishing to give extra security for their clients, such as valet services, but would be extended to the general public beginning Monday.

“We have an agreement with the Jakarta Parking Management to start introducing the scheme. The results of the trial period also will be used as consideration in the drafting of a gubernatorial decree on parking,” he said.

The scheme will be implemented at off-street parking lots in Monas, Central Jakarta; the west side of Jl. Boulevard in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta; and the parking area in Blok M, South Jakarta.

On the street, it will cover Jl. H. Agus Salim and Jl. HOS Cokroaminoto in Central Jakarta, the east and west side of Jl. Boulevard in North Jakarta, Jl. Jatinegara Pasar and Jl. Kedoya Pasar in East Jakarta, Jl. Gajah Mada and Jl. Hayam Wuruk in West Jakarta, and Jl. Wolter Mongonsidi and Jl. Panglima Polim in South Jakarta.

Parking tickets printed from electronic ticket dispensers will have extra wording about the parking insurance policy, or the parking attendant will provide an extra ticket besides the standard parking ticket.

“This means that customers are encouraged to always ask for a parking ticket,” Heron said, adding it was in line with the Jakarta Parking Management’s effort to minimize opportunities for corruption.

A study by the University of Indonesia determined the ideal premium price at Rp 500 per car and Rp 300 per motorcycle for off-street parking, and Rp 1,000 per car and Rp 500 per motorcycle for on-street parking due to the increased risk.

For locations that have not participated in the system, vehicle owners can still get insurance policies through Bumi Artha’s SMS-based system. Type Askir#plate number#vehicle brand#vehicle type#parking location#parking ticket number on mobile phones using any cellular operator, and send to 6288.

“The cost of the SMS, at Rp 2,000 per message, will already include the cost of the insurance policy premium,” Heron said, explaining that an automatic response would immediately provide a policy number.

Using the parking ticket and policy, a customer can claim damages, such as for total or partial loss of vehicle, damage or loss through accidents or criminal acts, damage through riots, except cases related to political upheaval, terrorism and sabotage, and personal accidents occurring in parking areas or parking buildings.

“Accessories that come with the vehicle, that are factory standard, will also be insured, including tape players,” Heron said.

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel for the railways?

The Jakarta Post, Saturday, March 4, 2006

It is not that they do not fully grasp the dangers; people riding on the top of railway carriages do it out of desperation, transportation experts say.

“So far, there are no alternatives for a low-cost, long-distance mass transportation system, other than the economy trains. So, more often than not, people have no choice but to ride on them,” Indonesian Transportation Society chairman Bambang Susantono told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Rail transportation is the cheapest means of getting around in the city. A mere Rp 1,500 (about US$0.16) takes a passenger from Rangkas Bitung in West Java to Jakarta, a distance of about 80 kilometers.

It is also the most efficient, as it is able to transport 10 times the number of passengers per hour than Jakarta’s other transportation systems.

At peak hours, office workers, street musicians, beggars, traditional market vendors and transvestites sit side by side. But, for the city’s poorest people, even Rp 1,500 is considered steep.

“You need only ride on an economy train — on any route, at any given hour — to get an idea of the demand for rail transportation. Take the Rangkas Bitung route, people always have to resort to carriage roofs because there’s no room inside,” the director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) Indonesia, Darmaningtyas, said.

Moreover, officials of the railways — particularly on the Jakarta-Rangkas Bitung route — collect tickets in a random fashion. A passenger without a ticket has two options: Slip the fare to a slaphappy conductor or enjoy a free ride.

Which is where the problem lies.

“The government is obliged to subsidize economy-level services, so that access is granted even to the underserved. But the government never gives enough to PT KAI (state railway) because it considers the management has not done enough to draw earnings from passengers,” Bambang said.

If all train passengers bought tickets as they should, PT KAI earnings would surge by 20 to 30 percent, he said.

Darmaningtys, who is also the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, does not see a solution in sight.

“Unless there’s greater political will to fix our rail system, the government must pay the full subsidy, because that’s its duty. On the other hand, PT KAI must also clean up its act,” he said.

With the government subsidy and increased revenue, the railways could upgrade its carriages and engines.

“It’s high time for PT KAI to modernize its armada — both its long-distance and short-distance economy trains,” Darmaningtyas said.

The company’s long-distance economy trains date back to the 1960s, while the short-distance trains were procured secondhand from various countries.

The greatest agents of change are the passengers themselves, but unfortunately Indonesian passengers are passive in this respect.

“They act like how the railways operates is none of their business,” Darmaningtyas said.

We are dealing with individuals who hurl rocks at passing trains to smash the windows in, or dispose of their trash on the carriage floor or obstruct a door so it jams.

“I can’t understand it either,” he said.

Lessons learned from Asia’s three MRT systems

The Jakarta Post, Friday, 17 February 2006

The experiences of three major Asian cities indicate a mass rapid transit (MRT) system will not work effectively unless there is great political will to integrate the system on a level playing field with cars, buses and other rail projects.

“Powerful leadership is needed to plan, think through and execute the plan,” a World Bank transportation expert, Jitendra N. Bajpai, said at a discussion Wednesday, citing Lee Kuan Yew and Nikita Kruschev as the figures behind the success of the Singapore and Moscow metros, respectively.

Bajpai — part of a team studying urban rail concessions in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Manila for the World Bank — said many of the failures in implementing MRT systems in these three cities derived from failed complementary actions, or unrealistic targets.

“Some expected the MRT systems to solve congestion and to improve public transportation across the board, without the complementary policies that are now recognized as necessary. These expectations were unrealistic,” he said.

Transportation policies should provide a level playing field for all transportation modes through tax/subsidy and regulatory measures, otherwise MRT benefits suffer and government funding support is higher than it should be, Bajpai said, explaining that this happens when cars or buses are subsidized or when competition is not regulated.

People also need to access the MRT by other transportation modes, therefore a failure to set up seamless transfers contributed to the fact that the MRT systems in the three cities failed to get car owners to switch to the systems.

“If you had a car, would you leave your car and use the system, knowing that you needed to make so many transfers? You wouldn’t do it, unless the transfers were very well done,” Bajpai said.

So far, the most successful of the systems is Bangkok’s 23-kilometer BTS skytrain, operating since 2000, with a ridership of 15.2 passengers per kilometer in a city of 10 million, 53 percent of whom use public transportation.

Manila’s 11 million population brought in only 15.6 passengers per kilometer on its 24-km LRT III system, in a city where 72 percent of the population uses public transportation.

Other systems — Bangkok’s Blue Line subway (18 km) and Kuala Lumpur’s Star (25 km), Putra (24 km) and Monorail (11 km) — each attracted fewer than 10 passengers per kilometer.

While all of these systems began with private concessions — in the hope of avoiding the need for public funding — most projects did not achieve the financial returns forecast, and were taken over by the government, Bajpai said.

“Because an MRT system is expensive — you can’t just leave off once the project has started, meaning that the government needs to take over,” he said, citing the Star and Putra lines in Kuala Lumpur.

Learning from the experiences of the three cities, Jakarta should try to address its transportation problems in a way that it can most afford, and not rely solely on private concessions because a strong government role is still needed to make the system feasible, Bajpai said.

“What happens is that people are attracted to a certain system without looking at how it can solve the problem. The solution is brought forward first, without looking at the problem,” he said.

In every step of planning and execution, public consultation and transparency should be emphasized, and the government’s focus needs to be on creating a sustainable MRT system, rather than on implementing an infrastructure project.

For Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Manila, “it’s a tale of winners and losers, and in the end the winners are the users — but not the poor people because fares are high — and the losers are the government, bankers and investors”, Bajpai said.

Lax roadworthy test no shining example

The Jakarta Post, Thursday, January 19, 2006

A bus stopped, took on passengers, then quickly departed in a choking cloud of smoke. People on the sidewalk scrambled for a handkerchief or piece of tissue to cover their noses from the black trail of fumes.

It is the glaring evidence that, after a decade of requiring public transportation and cargo vehicles to regularly check their roadworthiness, many dubiously certified ones are still on the city’s streets.

“Considering how rife extortion practices are in the roadworthy test on public vehicles, we can only hope that the new bylaw requiring private vehicles to have their emissions tested won’t become like that,” Mitra Emisi Bersih (MEB) program manager Firdaus Cahyadi told The Jakarta Post Wednesday.

He was concerned that, with only two weeks before the bylaw’s implementation, no procedures were in place to deal with the prospect of vehicle owners being shaken down to reach the emissions’ standard.

“For the last decade, the government has dealt with the testing of only 10 percent of the city’s total vehicles, and yet it failed to control illegal practices that went on,” Firdaus said.

It was not because the owners of the vehicles were neglectful in coming in for their tests. Firdaus said that an MEB study of 773 vehicles about to be tested at Ujung Menteng test center in East Jakarta in 2004 showed that 99.7 percent of them regularly tested their vehicles’ roadworthiness.

The fact was that almost all of them — 99 percent — had been forced, at one time or another, to employ the services of a middleman — meant to save time and avoid bureaucratic snags — for the test.

Difficulties with bureaucracy, at 50.7 percent, was the most frequent complication they faced, followed by those created by the middlemen (29 percent), Firdaus said.

The brokers do not come cheap, with some charging between Rp 200,000 (about US$21) to Rp 300,000 per vehicle, while the official charge for a minivan test was only Rp 67,000, he said.

Frequent media reports on the extortion at various testing stations, with many assuming the local officials also take a cut of the charges from the middlemen, have failed to stop the practice.

“Without an official report, it’s difficult for us to tell the difference between a middleman and those who aren’t, and so far there has not been a report,” head of the Jakarta Transportation Agency Nurachman argued, adding that his office would do its utmost to punish any officials involved in the shakedown.

The use of privately owned auto workshops in the emissions tests — instead of government controlled ones for the roadworthy tests for public vehicles — may help minimize illegal practices, but it was no guarantee, Firdaus said.

He urged strict public control and open access to information about emissions tests and air quality.

“The air quality in Jakarta will be one of the main indicators of how successful the emissions test program is. If air quality remains the same after the testing becomes mandatory, then we know that it was not conducted properly.”