Monorail, an Ever Changing Project

Jakarta people are tired with the daily traffic jams that they have to face. The number of cars and motorcycles which crowd the roads are increasing significantly from time to time. Meanwhile, the length of the roads and public transportation armada are stagnant. The city government seems helpless unless they find some innovative ways to develop a revolutionary mode of transportation. 

   

However, the alternatives are costly especially when it comes to taking the monorail as the public mass transportation. Never on the world that a project underwent so much changing which took 12 years to truly begin. It was in 2001 that the Central government through the Ministry of State Owned Companies and city government agreed to establish a project consortium called PT Indonesia Transit Central (ITC) headed by PT Adhi Karya.

After three years of conducting a feasibility study, ITC started to construct the monorail poles which were inaugurated by President Megawati on June 2004 but was postponed only after several weeks on the go. In 2005, the project then was given to a consortium consisting of PT Jakarta Monorail and Omnico a Singapore company which provided Adhi Karya 45 percent shares. However, as Omnico didn't provide enough capital the project failed to proceed.  

Early this year, after it halted for years,  Joko Widodo, the new city governor, confirmed that the monorail project would be continued under Jakarta Monorail management. Adhi Karya declined to join and offered instead a proposal to Jakarta government to build other monorail projects with different routes.

The Jakarta Monorail had two options of co-operation with the third party namely Hadji Kalla Group and Ortus Group. The latter was preferred as they offered better option investing Rp12 trillion without any financial support from national or city budgets and willing to pay Rp204 billion to Adhi Karya as the compensation for their previous monorail pole constructions. 

The monorail will cover two main routes: Kampung Melayu-Tebet-Kuningan-Casablanca-Tanah Abang-Roxy-Taman Anggrek (West Jakarta) with the extension to the east from Pondok Kelapa-Sentral East Jakarta and to the west from Puri Indah. Meanwhile the second line starts from Kuningan-Duku Atas-Pejompongan-Senayan-Gatot Subroto-and back to Kuningan.

As the monorail project is funded by private corporations, the transportation tariff will fully depend on the amount of the investment and the operating cost. However, city residents have their option to select which one of the modes of transportation suitable most for them. With regards to their purchasing power, they may choose the cheapest mode of transportation but sacrificing the comfort or more expensive luxury transportation whether monorail, busway, ordinary buses or else. 

As long as all options are available and people have various alternatives to choose there will be no problem for city residents to make up their minds said Jokowi.

Jokowi, the Jakarta Controversial Governor

Who is now the top news-maker in Indonesia? Many people will answer almost unanimously: “Jokowi”. Joko Widodo, the full name of Jokowi now the Jakarta governor, does indeed attract so many people, not only in Jakarta but the whole country. He was awarded as the world third best mayor by the England-based City Mayors Foundation, after Bilbao City Mayor, Spain, and Perth City Mayor, Australia, due to his outstanding achievement when he was the Solo city mayor. 

As a new metropolitan governor, his humble behavior doesn’t change as he was to be as Solo city mayor. He had done "grubby" things that no other bureaucrats of the same level want to do. He likes to go down to earth directly to the core of the problems, instead of staying in the luxury office doing notional things. He didn’t have any burden to walk around in the slum areas or the illegal site of sidewalk traders and picking up the first-hand information for the sake of having better city condition. 

The improvement of the city and the socio-economic conditions of his people were not his only concern. Even he put his hand on the construction of the car by the local Vocational High School students, the deed that actually should be taken by higher-ranking decision-makers.

No wonder that he easily gained votes in all Jakarta municipalities except in Thousand Islands defeating the incumbent governor, Dr. Fauzi Bowo. Even low-income families living along the railway tracks and river banks welcome him. They know though that Jokowi may dismantle their illegal huts hoping to get better resettlement in new plain cluster houses that Jokowi promises to build in the nearby areas. 

To implement his working program, Jokowi is very firm, as he doesn’t like his subordinates to have business as usual and indifferently doing their duties inspirited. Fortunately, he is supported by Basuki Purnama, his deputy, who is also pragmatic as himself whom he assigns to deal with administrative works. Basuki, whose nickname Ahok, under the auspice of Jokowi, imposes his subordinates to set up more efficient municipal work program and budget, review the cost of mega-projects and make use of the excess budget for coping the acute traffic jam and seasonal flood problems. 

As Basuki handles most of the office works, Jokowi can concentrate to take in his “hobby” making incognito tours surprising many of his district heads. During one of his unexpected abrupt tours in Marunda, North Jakarta, he was surprised to find that many cluster houses intended for low-income families were still half empty. As the rented cost was relatively cheap there must be something tricky that his subordinates may gain illegal profit for themselves. 

The intermediaries are used to sneaky around offering people to get the accommodation inside cluster houses but with some extra handsome ransom. The head of city housing program soon resigned or otherwise be fired as he deceived people telling that nobody from the slum areas was eager to move to the cluster houses. 

To cope with the latent traffic jam, Jokowi proposed to impose the alternate restriction in certain roads on cars having even-or-odd plate number replacing the three-in-one regulation. As expected, there are pros and cons to this new idea drawing president’s attention asking for a careful study before putting it into effect. 

On top of his priority to expand the busway armada, he cautiously reconsiders the existing mega-project plans among others mono-rails, fly-over, city toll-road sections and new proposal on multi-function tunnel designed for coping with both water flooding and traffic problems.

One of the flagship programs of the governor is the free Jakarta Health Cards. Coinciding with National Heroes Day, Jokowi launched the cards in some districts marking the beginning of the card distribution to all Jakarta citizens, rich and poor, hoping that only poor people numbering to 4.7 million will really want to take the benefit of it.

Unfortunately, his goodwill was shadowed by heavy floods taking place during his first 100-working days which inundated the whole city, the presidential palace included, which forced him to intensify his abrupt visits to various places in the city searching for a future better solution. 

Dear Mr. Governor, welcome and good luck!