Will North Jakarta Subside below Sea Level?

It is alarming that the level of seawater inundating Jakarta coastal area is getting higher and higher. Today we can notice that at certain spots in Jakarta coastal area the sea water level invading the land could reach up to 2 meters during high tide. Some people think that Jakarta coastal area is in the process of submerging below the sea level. 

Does such a phenomenon really happen in Jakarta? Some surveys conducted in coastal areas indicate that the subsidence of the areas may reach 10 centimeters annually. However, we have to be extremely prudent about such a diagnosis as it may lead us to the wrong solution.

It is true that for some dense populated and industrial areas which are relatively far from the coast,  the high withdrawal rate of the groundwater through the wells drilled in those areas may cause slight land subsidence.

However, this groundwater withdrawal unlikely affects the subsidence in the coastal areas. The evidence of the seawater intrusion up to Central Jakarta proves that such water withdrawal has been compensated by the seawater intrusion to the groundwater formation in those areas. 

There are, indeed, certain spots in the coastal areas which are subsiding, such as on the site of Muara Karang power plant, but all of those subsided areas are ex-coastal land reclamation and cannot be generalized to happen elsewhere. 

Some experts pointed out to the rise of sea water level which is about one centimeter annually. Once again, we have also to be cautious to such claim as the sea water rise should be globally occurring and should be verified whether it occurs elsewhere.

One thing for sure that the sedimentation which raises the riverbed in the estuary of 13 rivers in the Jakarta Bay is the main cause of the sea flood. In the high tide, these shallow estuaries resulting in the mixture of water from the rivers and the sea spill over the surrounding low areas. The original deep estuaries function like "safety valves" which allow the high tide seawater flow deep toward the upstream of the rivers and not spill over the drylands. 

Based on the premise that sea floods coming frontally through the coastline,  the City government is currently planning to construct a high polder along the coastal area preventing for the entry of seawater, locally called rob. The polders will be constructed in two sections of the coastal areas which are vulnerable to sea floods, namely Penjaringan to Kapuk Subdistrict in the west and Marunda to Kelapa Gading in the east.

The initial step is to improve the broken parts of the existing polder and water gates, and by doing so the city government promises that in 2012, North Jakarta will be free from sea flood. The next step is to construct a high polder along Jakarta Bay complete with water gates of 200 meters long to allow ocean liners to make their entry into and go out of Tanjung Priok Port.

Such an ambitious and "luxury" plan definitely will require a huge amount of money. Before the city government goes further with the plan, it is highly advisable to re-scrutinize the diagnosis of the cause of the sea flood in order to get a more proper solution.

We have to consider what some experts said that areas bounded by such high polder will easily become shallow caused by the huge amount of mud and solid wasted discharged by all of those rivers into Jakarta Bay. 

It is highly recommended that the city government spends instead the loan or allocated budget, which is originally destined for the polder construction,  for the periodic dredging of those estuaries and river rehabilitation.  Some of the funds could be also used for relocation of the illegal huts along the river banks and for Jakarta clean rivers campaign. Such spending is definitely much lower than that required for the polder construction.

Reorganized Parking Areas along the City Roads

Jakarta as a metropolitan city surprisingly doesn’t have a comprehensive regulation on the parking areas along the city side roads, even in the busiest areas in the heart of the city. The clear example of this is the misuse of side roads of Hayam Wuruk and Gajah Mada which connect the administrative area with the downtown.

The parking areas along the side roads of these lanes have long been known as the source of traffic jam almost all day long. The city government seems indifferent toward the situation and blames instead that the number of cars crossing Jakarta is too many.

Realizing that the situation becomes worse and worse the city government issued the regulation forbidding anybody to park the vehicle along the side roads of those two lanes. As the alternative, the drivers who want to stop-by along those two lanes are required to park their vehicles at certain appointed spots especially the buildings or shopping centers having parking lots. Those areas are able to accommodate cars which are enough to replace the number of cars which were used to park along the side roads of those two lanes.

The drivers who were reluctant to follow this regulation simply parked their vehicles on the sidewalks hampering the pedestrians’ ways, permitted at the discretion of the parking-men. Obviously, this outrageous act paying no attention to the convenience of pedestrians definitely could not be tolerated for whatever reasons.

Following the stipulation of the policy, hundreds of registered parking-men along the two roads held a demo protesting for the policy. As they lost the jobs, the city government has removed them to other areas around Jakarta or channeled to special buildings with parking lots.

The government seemed determined to follow up with the policy and ignore the protests of the businessmen and traders who own the offices or shops along the two roads. The traders argued that buyers would be getting less as they should park their vehicles far away from the shops.

As the city government wants to restore order, a plan is set up to maintain the function of the sidewalk by making it a little bit higher and make the areas more greenery by planting more trees and putting big pots containing flowers. At certain spots, iron pipes are already stuck deep into the ground to prevent any motorcycles and cars to pass through the sidewalks.

Today city officials are in the process of setting up the Detailed Engineering Design, and the project will be auctioned in the early of 2012. The city government should make sure that the public space for a pedestrian will not be taken over by sidewalk traders, which is the acute problem as occurs in anywhere else within the city.    

We hope that the project applied for Jalan Hayam Wuruk and Gajah Mada would be extended to other main roads throughout the city.

Jakarta, Once a Year Deserted City

When the best time for visitors should come to Jakarta to enjoy traffic-jam free? They may visit Jakarta around the celebration of Eid-al-Fitr, the Moslem most venerated day when almost 7 out of 12 million of its residents make an exodus to their hometown or village.

Indonesia may be a unique country which has a tradition for people to ask for pardon to each other on the celebration day, especially from the younger to the elders. To do that, as more than half of Jakarta residents originated from the countryside, they have to travel back to their native village as most of their parents and relatives stay there.

This year Eid-al-Fitr celebration fell on August 31 which arose controversy on its late stipulated date by the government. Most people had already prepared to celebrate the venerated day on August 30 as concordance with the public holiday stated in the calendar and were very surprised with such decision.

During the period of two days before and after the celebration, Jakarta resembled a deserted city. People who stayed in the city during this period might enjoy driving around downtown easily. The roads were almost free from any public and private transport as those who went to the countryside brought with them their own car or motorcycle.

However, contrary to the deserted roads, the amusement centers like Ancol Coastal and Indonesian Miniature Parks as well as Ragunan Zoo were flooded with citizens who stayed in the city and visitors coming from outside the city. During the last few days, the zoo already registered around 750,000 visitors.

In a certain degree, exodus caused problems for many families who stayed in the city, especially those who had hired the housemaids to do household chores. The housewives had to take over all duties of the housemaids and often went outside with their whole family for having lunch and dinner. And because of this reason, people were crowded in the hyper-marts and malls. 

The exodus also made most of the houses empty and only some big houses were guarded by the security. The district heads always reminded the citizens to report their departure so they could keep eyes on their houses. Some districts even asked the staying residents to help guard the area, especially on the weekend.  

For the city government, it was a good time for them to topple down empty illegal huts and stalls temporarily left by the owner. They were also used to screen the poor newcomers who came together with their residential relatives seeking the opportunity of getting the job. However, the past experience indicates that such governmental prevention has been unsuccessful and ineffective.

We wish you a happy Eid-al-Fitr!

Can the Road Crossers be Disciplined?

Everybody knows that traffic jams in Jakarta are acute. The standard explanations for that are too many cars and too many motorcycles as compared to the roads available. The situation is worsened by the non-disciplinary drivers, merchandizes put at the side of the road by unconcerned traders, the cars parked at the side of busy roads, and last but not least people cross the road at will.

Based on the reason for the frequencies of accidents of the road crossers and the traffic slow down caused by their crossing, the city government issued the regional law No. 22, 2009 to forbid and fine the person crossing the road at wrong sites. The law was dormant for some reasons for more than 2 years until the police revived it recently.

Under the law, the police are authorized to fine the road crossers Rp 250,000 (US$ 30) for those who don’t want to cross at zebra-cross, traffic light or crossing bridge fly-over the road. As try-out, the police held 2 weeks “Obedient Operation” this current month (July). At this stage, the police would not fine the violators but guide them to cross at the appointed spots.

After this try-out period, the police will impose a fine to the non-obedient road crossers or confiscate their ID cards to be proceeded to court session for recovering their ID after being fined. 

As it is anticipated, many people complain about the regulation for the reason that there are an insufficient number of the crossing bridges and definitely the number of zebra-crosses. For the latter, the government can easily increase the number of zebra-crosses by simply painting the roads in many spots required. In addition, the fine is considered as unreasonably high as most of the road crossers are low-income persons.   

So we urge the city government to paint Jakarta roads as many zebra-crosses as required and let's hope the citizens will obey the rule.  

Jakarta Celebrates Its Anniversary

Jakarta has just celebrated its 484 years of its anniversary marked by the opening of the Jakarta Fair. The city got the honor from the President of the Republic, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who officially opened the Jakarta Fair on June 09 as the mark of the anniversary. Since it was initiated by Governor Ali Sadikin in 1967 the Jakarta Fair grew bigger and promoted more products nationally as well as internationally.

During the fair, lasting from June 9 to July 10, we could see various entertainments, business activities, displays of new products and possibilities of having business trading partners. Visitors amounting to 4,2 million as compared to 3,8 million people last year were entertained by 250 group bands performing life music successively. More than 2,500 national and international companies took part in Jakarta Fair opening 1,300 stands, not to mention outlets and stalls for sidewalk traders.

The total transaction during the event was Rp3.5 trillion (around US$ 4 billion), wherein the last few days the rate of the transaction was higher to triple because of bigger discounts for buyers. The official of the whole activities’ coordinator, the Jakarta International Expo, said that the expo met with their satisfaction.  

The stipulation of the date of June 22, 1527, as the first establishment of Jakarta, causes recent controversies. It was based on one point in time in history almost 5 centuries ago when Fatahillah a commander of Demak Kingdom won the war against Portuguese.

Previously, in 1521, Portuguese held a treaty with Pakuan-Pajajaran, allowing them to construct a fort in the beach of Sunda Kelapa, which is at the north coast of Jakarta today, and annually receive spices from the kingdom as compensation of the Portuguese protection against the enemies. This event was memorized in Padrao Stone which is now kept in National Museum.

The Prince Fatahillah from Demak, Central Java, in coordination with Cirebon, being afraid that the agreement could hamper Islamic development, attacked Sunda Kelapa as well as Portuguese' fort and took it over. But before Fatahillah launched the full war, Portuguese fled away to Malacca where they felt more secure. Meanwhile, the locals, the Betawian people, were driven out without any resistance to the hinterland. The day was coined as Jayakarta, the victory day, taken as the original name of ancient Jakarta.

Some noted Betawian, however, were not happy with the stipulation and prefer instead the date of September 3, 1945, when Soekano stipulated Jakarta as a municipal. Albeit the controversies, as Jakarta has grown for the better, let’s all city residents celebrate the anniversary with joy.

Is It Possible Jakarta to Become [Cigarette] Smokeless?

Anywhere you go, either it is a remote place in the frozen climate close to the Arctic,  an arid desert in the middle of Sahara or a humid tropical rain-forest in Indonesia,  and not to mention densely populated cities everywhere in the world, you will find people smoke a cigarette. Jakarta is no exception. 

We have no idea how and when this strange habit first came up to people burning a bunch of dried tobacco leaves and sucking the smoke down into his lungs.  But one is certain, it was Columbus who was responsible for bringing tobacco seeds from America to Europe. From the WHO data, it is clear that tobacco is a major cause of death.  Globally the smoking-related deaths, which more or less reflect Indonesia condition, are 29 percent lung cancer, 24 percent heart disease, 16 percent chronic lung disease, 6 percent stroke, and the remaining are other various diagnoses.  

The tobacco companies in Indonesia produce an estimated 20 billion sticks a year or statistically every person in Indonesia, including children and babies, smoke more than one cigarette every day. The money burnt each year by the smokers is about Rp 20 trillion but that amount of money turns the business of cigarette on which many tobacco farmers, laborers, retailers, the cigarette industries as a whole and part of the government coffer depend on.   

 For the foreigners who visit Jakarta for the first time, they may smell some strong bizarre burning clove odor. That is the “kretek” cigarette, typical tobacco blended with clove, widely consumed by Indonesian people. Jakarta smokers have a bad habit of smoking anytime and anywhere wherever they pleased. They don’t care, no matter whether they are in the street, crowded train or bus, cinema, restaurants, amusement centers or else you name it. Whether you like it or not, you have to join inhaling the cigarette smoke or you have to leave the spot.  

With the aim to reduce the pollution of cigarette smoke, the city government has set an ideal program to free the cigarette smoke in Jakarta by 2012. Jakarta is the first area to initiate cigarette prohibition in its territory. The policy is now followed by many other cities such as Surabaya, Padang, Bogor, Lampung, Bukit Tinggi, and Denpasar. The policy is the strong commitment of the city governments to the health of the citizens. 

Jakarta Gubernatorial regulation No. 88/2010 regulating the smoking prohibition inside the buildings was put into effect since April 1, 2011, after it was socialized during the last six months consecutively since October 2010. The penalty for the smoker violating the regulation is exceedingly severe at Rp 50 million (US$ 5 thousand) but has never been implemented until today. Maybe because the penalty is so high that nobody puts it seriously. Once a  city-police caught a man smoking a cigarette and urged him to pay the fine. The accused took out his wallet and gave the police Rp10,000 (US$ 1) the only money he possessed. The law-enforcer gave him back the money and walked away saying nothing.

Within that time span, there were 92 buildings were considered bad related poor law enforcement related to non-smoking areas. Following the socialization of smoking prohibition issued by the city government, the citizens have got a better perception about it. Even Environment Controlling Body has received 169 complaints about locations which did not supervise yet the non-smoking areas. This indicates that Jakarta citizens have participated in the program. 

Despite protests from cigarette smokers, city government was determined to create clean air from cigarette smoke. Even the efforts are fully supported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Their representative in Jakarta said the Gubernatorial Regulation No.  88/ 2010 is in line with international rules. Tobacco is responsible for the death of 1 in 10 adults.

Indonesian Batik, the Masterpiece of Human Heritage

Indonesia should be proud of its cultural heritage as some of them have been recognized by UNESCO as the masterpiece of human heritage. Among those intangible heritages are traditional puppets (2003), "Kris" ceremonial knives (2005), traditional "batiks" (2009) and "angklung" bamboo musical instrument (2010). Now Indonesia has registered another three of its cultural heritage, namely Balinese traditional dance, Noken  Papuan handicraft and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII).

The foreigners who come for the first time to visit Jakarta may see the unusual sight of people wearing a colorful shirt. What they are wondering of is batik, a piece of cloth painted with various kinds of the composition of pictures or diagrams. It is a creative art design on a piece of cloth hand-drawn using a liquid candle as the media, to colorize the cloth surface area which is not covered by the liquid candle. The drawings with the liquid candle are done several times until you get the color combination as you wish.  UNESCO has recognized batik as the masterpiece of intangible heritage of humanity on October 2, 2009, following its far and wide fame.

In olden days, batik was worn by people living in Java. The people wore batik as early as the beginning of the 13^th century.  Up to the 18^th century, batik designs and productions were centered inside the kings’ palaces. At those days, before the liquid candle from oil product was available, people used the bee candle to draw the design. The colors were extracted from various plants and minerals.

At those days, both men and women wore batik as a sarong. The men used to wear batik sarong with a traditional dagger (kris) put at the waist. Batik was produced in such a way that its products were due to certain groups in social classes. There were batiks sarongs designed and produced for high class only. For a kind of batik with certain motifs, only the king and his families were allowed to wear it. Nowadays, we can still see the way of such wearing in the wedding ceremony where the bride and their parents wear such clothes imitating old style high-class wedding ceremony. 

In all, there are around 600 kinds of batik motifs in Indonesia. The cloth can undergo its sales in the form of a piece of clothes, trousers, or a sarong usually worn by women. The picture stands for good fate, high rankings of certain classes in the society or story in the past. Sometimes it resembles abstract paintings which need analysis to reveal its meaning.  The philosophy behind the drawing of a particular batik motif is related to the more subtle social background which needs insight and comprehensive explanation. 

Large scale batik production began only in 1920 when batik centers introduced textile printing machines. Most of its products were then uniforms and their artistic beauty faded away. As such the price became cheaper and common people could easily afford to buy batik products. 

Up to 1960s, batik was used only for sarongs and never for shirts. We are indebted to Ali Sadikin, the then governor of Jakarta, who encouraged the Jakarta citizens to proudly wear batik shirts as national identity. The campaign also accelerated the “swasembada” (national self-supporting) movement through the preference of using national products. 

The areas of batik groceries in Jakarta are mainly in Tanah Abang, from which all batik products are distributed to all over the country. As raw materials for batik are also sold there, some traders from Central Java moved to Jakarta producing their own batik. They brought workers from their home town causing in certain degree urbanization to Jakarta. 

With the aim to collect all kinds of batik designs from all over Indonesia, the Indonesian Batik Foundation (YBI) constructed a batik gallery inside the Indonesian Textile Museum. However, since the show-room allocated for batik is too small, not all batik designs are displayed at one moment. On every three-month period, the content of the gallery is replaced with the new ones. 

We expect that the city government is serious about their plan to construct a new Batik Museum by 2014 and allocate enough budgets for it. The realization of this museum would become a gesture of our appreciation toward batik’s international recognition not only as national heritage but also as the masterpiece of the whole humanity as it has been recognized by  UNESCO in 2009.

Jakarta’s IT Communications on the Move

The world is now without frontier. People are easily connected to each other by means of various IT media. The Indonesians and Jakarta people, in particular, are not the exception. As a country with a total population at around 230 million, the 4^th rank in the world, Indonesia is quite potential for any business activities, as the purchasing power is steadily increasing.

In the last two decades, Indonesia has experienced an  IT revolution that globally spread out and penetrated the country. The mobile phone started to penetrate the country in 1986 when most of the telecommunication media were the land-line telephones. The spectacular increase of the mobile-phone's users within that period has transformed the owner of the gadget from the haves to common people. Even today we can see, as a common view in Jakarta, a humble vegetable trader while pushing his merchandise carriage along with the alleys talks to his friend by using a hand-phone.

Five years ago, there were only 30 million subscribers connected to cellular networks, most of them were urban people. By 2008, the rural users outnumbering those living in the cities. By now, around 180 million people (78 percent of the populations) are connected to mobile phone networks. This means that almost every adult in the country possesses a mobile-phone. 

One of the big service providers in Indonesia had claimed that they alone had already 100 million customers. On the other side, the tele-stalls, called Wartel, which were flourishing at the early 2000s when most people still used land-line telephones, are now nose-diving due to the IT rapid development and the inexpensiveness of wireless communications. 

Reverberated by the diminishing customers and tough competition among the stall owners, many tele-stall owners are in the process of liquidation or converting their business into internet stalls, called Warnet. But the similar problem appears today from the Warnet business as people can now easily access the information from the internet by means of their mobile phones or a laptop accessible to the internet network.

Commercial Internet services in Indonesia were basically just commenced in 1995. In 2000, the internet users were around 2 million represented 1.0 percent of the population. Seven years later, the users increased to 20 million and now they are about 30 million representing 12 percent of the population in the country, with enormous potential market ahead.  


About 20 million of Indonesians use a variety of social-networking sites. The popularity of accessing social-networking sites over mobile phones has created a unique phenomenon in Indonesia. The number of people who use mobile phones to access the Internet is bypassing that of people who use computers for their Internet access. The lack of fixed-line infrastructure and the low price of mobile phones compared to computers have driven the phenomenon, especially in rural areas.

In Jakarta, among the active internet users who have their own blogs are still very low at around 130,000. They are from various layers of societies, including individuals such as students, lecturers, politicians, and businessmen as well as governmental institutions, social and political organizations, private offices, companies, and shopping centers for presenting their company profiles. 

For those who are frequently blogging, their characteristics can be detected due to the topics selected, the linkage of the topics with other websites and to the seriousness to handle the topics. 

Statistically almost every Jakarta resident possesses a hand-phone, and around half of the  Jakarta population are internet users, representing 16% of the total users in the country. The same number of Jakarta residents are also accessible to a website from their mobile phones. Among 130,000  bloggers registered in Jakarta, around 85,000 use Blogspot.com and the remaining use Wordpress.com. 


Due to the easiness to have a website, the number of blogs grows up rapidly.  Those who are dealing with internet and website should have realized that there is a big market of potential users in Indonesia specifically in Jakarta. The figures confirm this fact.

Jakarta Youngster's Creativity and Music Bands

More than a city, Jakarta is a destination encompassing an array of unique and exciting areas. It is the melting point of various ethnic groups in Indonesia. The city is endowed with rich traditional cultural heritage and becomes lively because of its teens’ dynamical lifestyle and creativity. Their extra-school activities and hobbies become an important part of the entertainment business. One of the activities of some youngsters in music arrangements and performance make the music industry flourish.

The musical life in Indonesia has experienced up and down cycles. When musical groups started to establish and develop in the early 1960s, at the same time when the Beatles reached its peak, the musical groups in Indonesia faced a bleak situation as the political life became very intense. It was the period when the Indonesian communist party was in its apogee. Soekarno banned the musical groups which he considered as too westernized. Some of the band members were even put in jail. The musical groups slowly rose again when the Old Order crumpled and life became more warm and open. For the young generation that dark period was just history.  

Indonesia with its 230 million population is obviously a huge market for music records. With such potential buyers, it is not too hard for the talented group to break the commercial limit of 50,000 record sales. For those who gain sales of 100,000 copies are eligible to be awarded a golden trophy and a platinum trophy for 150,000 sales. 

In terms of record sales, market size in Indonesia is estimated at around Rp1 trillion (US$ 110 million) per annum (in 2004). However, because of piracy, legal record album sales were declining sharply at around 20% annually. Recording industry as one of the most important elements of Indonesia's music industry suffered heavy blows. If in 2005 the number of tapes, CDs and VCDs that circulated in Indonesia reached 30 million pieces, then in 2006 the figure had shrunk to 24 million  copies continued to decline in 2007 to reach 19 million pieces and only about 15 million in 2008, and was estimated at as low as  9 million in 2010. 

Although the movement of anti-piracy continued, the piracy remained rampant.  The circulation of pirated products was estimated to reach 90% of the original ones. That is, one official album release, 9 pirated copies have appeared on the market.

Notwithstanding, the progress of technological development and its direct effect on the lower price of the cassette, CD and DVD players make musical bands flourish in Indonesia. The easiness to record the music, the availability of electrical music instruments and the dream to receive wide promotion nationally is the reasons why the establishment of music bands is growing so fast. 

Today there are around 166 professional music groups in Indonesia the majority of which having the domicile in Jakarta. Some music groups evolve from street singers who are used to performing their singing in the crowded sidewalks and sometimes illegally in the buses and commuter train. Due to their mobility, their instruments are usually simple consisting of guitar and banjo.

As they grow up, they become “Indie” music groups with more complete and sophisticated instruments. As their financial capability is relatively weak, they do everything themselves including recording, promotion, marketing, sales, and book-keeping. Indie music groups are numerous, there are around 1,200 in Jakarta alone, around 1,000 in Yogyakarta and Central Java,  not to mention in other cities in Indonesia.
 

Usually, they start by imitating the songs of famous music bands and step by step they composed their own songs. In music term, independent music, often shortened to indie music or "indie", is used to describe an autonomous group, independence from major commercial record labels or their subsidiaries,  an approach of "do-it-yourself" to music recording and publishing. 

Then, at the top level, there are professional groups which are financially powerful enough that they can hire band management which handles two or more music groups. As they grow stronger, they would become management band capable of hiring their own managers and book-keepers.

The professional and indie music groups develop well and are in a complementary position. There is probably no difference in talents of both group members but their fate depends on the public acceptance and opportunities to perform music on special occasions. 

The music audiences today are more segmented due to the increasing number of music bands with their own specialties including heavy metal, thrash metal, reggae, pop, new wave, high octane rock and last but not least the semi-traditional "dangdut" and some other ones. 

Most of the newcomers have to sign their working contracts with the giant musical recorders which in turn handle their promotion, recordings, merchandise or market their albums through internet, TV programs and radio which air musical performances of the newcomers.

Another activity such as the TV program like “Indonesia Mencari Bakat” (Searching for Talented Persons) aired by TV channels is able to find talented young people as singers and vocal groups enabling them to develop their abilities and allow them to enter the music studio recording.  Another TV program of Indonesian Idol, resembling the American Idol program, for a few years was able to grab talented singers which were finally hired by the recording companies or they joined with other group bands in Jakarta. 

The Power of Motorcycles

Jakarta citizens are highly mobile due to their daily working schedules and business activities as well as social and other non-routine activities.  Their mobility is supported by 7,5 million motorcycles of various kinds and more than 2 millions of cars, not to mention around 800,000 of public transportation of various kinds (300,000 buses and 500,000 other kinds of vehicles).

Considering the population in Greater Jakarta which is 20 million (9,5 million in the Metropolitan), the use of motorcycle excluding those having private cars is 1 : 3 in Jakarta. Recently, a total of 53 million units of motorcycles had been manufactured in Indonesia, of which as many as 50 million units were in circulation on the streets. Considering the population of Indonesia are 230 million, the use of motorcycles per capita in Indonesia was around 1: 5.

With such proportion, the sales of new motorcycles in Jakarta are still high, more than 3,000 motorcycles are sold per day. This is because of an easy purchasing pattern based on credit-backed multi-financing which eventually enhance the people’s purchasing-power for these two-wheeled vehicles. With a down payment of only Rp 500 thousand, one can directly bring home the vehicle worth of more than Rp 10 million. 

With such kind of financing and the capability of the motorcycle industry to produce powerful, efficient (fuel consumption of around 40 kilometers per liter)  and relatively cheap transportation mode, more people prefer to use motorcycles rather than public transportation.  And here lies the problem. The more frequent the traffic jams, the more people try to use motorcycles instead of public transport causing more traffic jam. The travel of the motorcycles is now amounted to around 20 million trips per day.

Notwithstanding, hardly anybody is aware of the significant roles of motorcycles in the economic growth of the country. The authority overlooks the motorcycle role in increasing tremendously the mobility of the people to turn the business environment.  Indonesia doesn't need to catch up with the developed countries to increase significantly the number of cars per capita in order to stimulate economic activities. In term of people mobility,  as the country has  50 million motorcycles in addition to 10 million cars, their economic power is equivalent to the developed countries having 60 million cars (assuming that one car has two passengers). 

The eagerness of using the motorcycles by middle and lower classes helps the country to shortcut the way towards the acceleration of its economic development. This is really a revolution through the transportation sector in Indonesia as one way to catch up with the economics of developed countries.

The mobility of the motorcyclists shifts the location of new houses needed from the city into the suburbs up to around sixty kilometers out of the city which enlarges the area of Greater Jakarta today. Their mobility also helps to create good business activities and the environment as well as stimulates domestic tourist developments such as the establishment of new restaurants and new attractions especially in the surrounding areas having a special interest or good panorama.  

Jakarta's infrastructure seems not ready to support such high growth of motorcycle usage. Currently, the total number of vehicles and a total length of roads which is around 7,650 kilometers in Jakarta are far from proportional. The road length extension is below 1% whereas the growth of car and motorcycles users is more than 6% annually.

The government should think more about providing the infrastructure for motorcycles, as they are relatively easy, inexpensive and efficient than cars. The regulators’ mindset should be changed. Banning or restricting motorcyclists crossing some protocol roads are counterproductive. The authorities should not regard the motorcycles solely as the source of the traffic jam but also as the power of the economic enhancement of the country. 

The government should look for the way out of how the motorcyclists can more easily and safely travel across the city. They should be protected as far as possible from the fatal accident which may happen to them in riding between the vehicles through a very narrow escape between them. Every day at least three lives have lost due to road traffic accidents, about two of them are motorcyclists.

The traffic problem can be more easily reduced if adequate and safer, convenient, affordable, more integrated and timely public transportation is available. However, to develop such public transportation is not an easy task. It is far more inexpensive to change and educate the mentality of the motorcyclists for mutual respect, mutual care, obeying the rules, and throwing away the shortcut mentality. This effort should be continuously done by the entire community, reverberated by the rule of law firmly and consistently imposed by the related authorities.