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.