Jakarta with its population of 9.5 million and around 3.5 million commuters who come from the surrounding areas certainly cause headache traffic problems. Road and highways are packed with cars, buses, and motorcycles.
This situation becomes worse as the passengers are not quite disciplined. We can see the consequences of this attitude when a traffic light malfunctioned which caused serious traffic jam with the very long queue of vehicles. Each passenger tries to pass over the others making cars-interlocking which blocks the vehicles to move.
At some crossroads, the regulations of traffic lights are imbalanced. We can be surprised to see the length of red light time before we are given the green light to pass. We can find that the countdown of the red to green lights is very long at one side, while at the other side it is very short allowing only two or three vehicles to pass through causing a very long queue at that direction.
One of the solutions that the city government has implemented was the ‘three-in-one’ regulation. This applies for protocol roads which permit only cars with three passengers to enter these roads during the peak hours. However, in these protocol roads, the police often block the vehicles from slow track entering the main track even though it is almost empty causing a heavy traffic jam in the slow track. It seems that the police are indifferent toward the situation.
Another solution that the city government likes to apply is the idea to restrict the motorcycles entering some major lanes. It seems that they are panic of not deeply considering the vital importance of motorcycles as a mode of the people’s transportation for economics. The mobility of those people using motorcycles is equal or even faster to those who are using cars. We can imagine how many cars they are replacing to have the same mobility in contributing to the progress of the economy.
Generally speaking, the problem of traffic lights is attributed to the lack of a centralized traffic control system. The Jakarta Transportation Agency lacks a centralized traffic control system to automatically detect malfunctioning or any broken traffic lights, which often exacerbate Jakarta’s chronic traffic jams. It is because the traffic lights at every junction have their own controllers, which are programmed manually to time the lights according to the flow of traffic during different times of the day.
Without a comprehensive system to monitor traffic lights, it is impossible to automatically detect malfunctioning or blacked-out traffic-lights, which are usually caused by power failure. The problem is reverberated by the poor condition of some traffic lights because they have been too old and are now worn out.
Seventeen Ways to Overcome Traffic Jam in Jakarta
Because of these acute traffic problems some people are proposing an idea to remove the state capital out of Jakarta to somewhere else outside Java. The traffic problems that Jakarta, as the state capital, encounters draw the attention of the central government. The central government is willing to assist the city government to cope with the problem by providing comprehensive planning and budgeting that it requires.
One of the steps is to apply the electronic road pricing (ERP), the road user-pay system, which will take effect immediately. Other steps are the sterilization of the bus-way route (which is now already underway); increase bus-way lanes; restructure the small fleet public transportation; add the shuttle trains and double tracks in Jabodetabek; integrate the Jakarta inner railway project with mass transportation; construct six elevated lanes and highways in Jakarta; start to build Mass Rapid Transit (MRT); review the parking policy and build the parking area in the railway station to reduce long-range vehicle usage; improve the utilization of natural gas for transportation.
We are looking forward to the successful realization of those planning.
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