Humanistic transportation

City agglomeration
There is a tendency toward sprawling in the developments of Indonesian cities. A geographical gap exists between the locations of the place of residence and the place of work. Affordable houses exist increasingly farther away from the centers of activities in the city, and the city inhabitants are thus forced to endure long hours of work-related travels. The area of Jakarta-Bogor-Depok-Tangerang-Bekasi (or Jabodetabek for short) now accommodates 30 million travels per day. With such a huge number of travels, average speed of vehicles is around 34.5 km per hour. Every day, more than 600,000 vehicles move from Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi toward the center of Jakarta, with a radial-concentric pattern of travel, or going toward the center of the city. Compared to the data from 1985, this year has seen a ten-fold increase in the number of travels from Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi to Jakarta. On the other hand, the number of vehicles in Jakarta and the surrounding area has reached around five millions, with a growth of around 1,035 new motorbikes and 269 new cars per month.

With such a tendency, if there are no improvements in the public transportation system, more and more people will travel using private vehicles, whether cars or motorbikes. Under such circumstances, in ten years at the latest approximation, Jakarta will face a thorough traffic jam, in which the existing transportation system can no longer accommodate the traffic. An example of such a situation is already felt when heavy rains fall in Jakarta and there are traffic jams everywhere, where one crossroad locks the traffic to another crossroads. With such interlocking positions, it will be difficult for the traffic to move, and all vehicles will be stuck.


Revitalization of the public transportation: where should we begin?
Jakarta is indeed very late in managing its mass transportation system. Previously, the standard yardstick for traffic jams in the Southeast Asia is either Bangkok or Manila. Nowadays, the two cities already have mass transportation systems, such as subways and light rail train, which they consistently improve to anticipate traffic needs. Learning from the experiences of the two cities, we can say that we can never be “too late” to manage the city transportation system in Indonesia. Another example is the city of Bogota in Columbia, whose traffic was so complicated and made even more complex with the existence of drugs mafias and the city’s informal sector. Still, the condition there can be improved and Bogota now enjoys one of the most sophisticated transportation system, to which many other cities in the world refer. For this to be realized, however, initial steps must be taken and there should be further consistent steps taken to improve the transportation system in Jakarta. Such steps require strong leadership and public participations.

Jakarta has actually conducted so many studies about transportation. The latest documents to which a lot of people now often refer are the Jakarta’s Macro-Transportation Patterns and the Study on Integrated Transport Master Plan (SITRAMP for short) Jabodetabek. Eventually, however, a plan will only be meaningful if it can be implemented. This means that the plan to improve the public transportation in Jakarta will inevitably deal with the institutional aspect, where the regulator, the service provider, and the consumers will all be involved. Here, Jakarta cannot act alone, as the patterns of transportation movements in Jakarta mainly originate and end in Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi. The SITRAMP Jabodetabek, for example, has proved that the master plan for the regional transportation could not be implemented because there have been no commitments from the regional governments to execute the regional transportation system. Jakarta cannot act alone to solve the problems of transportation, and neither can Bogor, Tangerang, Depok, and Bekasi. Travels in these areas cannot be limited by administrative boundaries. There should be a common platform where all the involved regional governments can act together, discarding their egos, so that an efficient regional transportation system can be realized.


Social engineering for mass transportation
Amid the increasing complexity of the transportation system, with the overlapping routes and the absence of control on the quality of service, the Regional Government of the Province of Jakarta made the effort to launch the TransJakarta busway system as the backbone of the urban mass transportation. For transportation planners, the TransJakarta busway system serves as a social engineering process in public transportation. Urban transportation system in Indonesia has long neglected its ethics. Examples are rife about how the Indonesian transportation system has been ignoring the ethics. Many people are speeding on the street, the pedestrians are ignored, and there is also the absence of ticketing systems, making it difficult for us to know for sure the actual number of people using the public transportation. With the busway system, passengers are again led to get used to queuing and to getting on and off the bus only at the bus stops, and to buying tickets. With this system, the buses are expected to arrive at the bus stops in certain intervals, therefore making it easier for people to plan their trips. The busway system also necessitates the re-organizing of the overlapping routes, clarifying which buses are long distance buses and which are the feeders. In total, the system is expected to create a reliable, efficient, safe, and comfortable transportation system, based on professionalism in managing the public transportation.

There are many other weaknesses in the busway system; and people have been complaining most about the feeder system. The efficiency of this system truly affects the performance of the busway system, because without an efficient feeder system, the targeted users of personal vehicles will not use the busway. Another weakness is the lack of park-and-ride facilities. In the countries where the busway system has been successfully applied, parking lots with reasonable rates are made available. Users of personal vehicles will calculate the parking cost as a part of the whole transportation cost that they need to bear. There is also a weakness in the ticketing system, which should actually allow passengers to move between routes without having to buy a new ticket every time they change from the feeder bus to the TransJakarta buses—therefore enabling the passengers to buy just one ticket from their station of origin to their destination. Later on, the ticket should be integrated with other modes of transportation, such as the commuting train system. Usually, discounted tickets are also made available for people who wish to buy tickets on a monthly or yearly basis, or for people who wish to travel during the weekends.


Monorail and subway
Besides developing the busway, the Regional Government of Jakarta, in cooperation with the private sector, will also build a monorail system. The project is worth USD650 million, will cover a total length of around 28 kilometers, and will be build in two routes—the east – west route (Kampung Melayu – Taman Anggrek Mall) and the circular route connecting the CBD and the malls at the heart of the city.

There are some notes that we can use to review the performance of the monorail system when it is already in operation. First, we must observe the feeding system of the monorail—how the monorail users reach the stations and how they continue their travels from the stations to their destination. We must also consider the transfer from the monorail system to other modes of transportation, not only the busway system, but also other public transportation system. It is important to take a close look at the points of transfer from the monorail system to other modes of transportation. At those points, there should be safe and comfortable facilities for pedestrians—one should not forget the fact that walking is the “glue” that binds all the transportation modes. It does not matter whether a person is using the car, the motorbike, or the pushbike—in the beginning and at the end, he or she will have to walk. In short, the monorail should absolutely be integrated to other systems of transportation. Ideally, there should be one ticket that allows passengers to move safely, easily, and comfortably from the monorail system to the busway.

Another aspect that should also be observed is the affordability of the system. Apparently, the targeted segment is the people in the middle-to-upper class, because the average ticket price will be Rp7,000.00—more than three times the cost of the usual bus ride. There is also the possibility that the investors will try to apply the concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD), integrating the developments of property areas with the transportation system. They will thus try to manage access to buildings or malls, and take the advantage of possible advertisements as their additional source of income. Such concept has been successfully applied in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and is also being tested in Kuala Lumpur.

Jakarta will also have a subway system from Lebak Bulus to Kota—the first stage of development will be from Lebak Bulus to Dukuh Atas, which will cover a length of 14.5 kilometers. The system will not entirely exist underground, as from the twelve planned stops, only four stops—from Semanggi to Dukuh Atas—which will exist underground. The total cost will be around Rp8.8 trillions and covered by soft loans from the Japanese Government. A subway system indeed has quite a big capacity—it will carry around 50,000 to 70,000 passengers per direction per hour. The cost, however, will be huge, around USD20 millions to USD180 millions per kilometer—compare it with the busway system which takes around USD1 million to USD10 millions per kilometer. Besides, building a subway system will take more than three years, while it takes only one to two years to build a busway corridor.

Whichever the transportation system or service that will be provided, the key word stays the same: integration. The urban public transportation must be integrated and provide transportation options for the city dwellers. The government as the supervisor of the system must be able to position itself correctly and recognize which services that the people need. Simulations and modeling practices should take place, so that the government can recognize and map the movements of people and objects in the city. The essence of all these is that this is the time to re-organize the transportation system in the area of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi, taking advantage of the momentum created by the developments of the busway and the monorail systems. The long-, medium-, and short-distance transportation systems must be reorganized to give us an integrated totality with a good accessibility. The reorganization of the public transportation system in Bogota, Colombia, for example, sets the target that 85% of the seven million city dwellers will live in the radius of 500 meters from the Trans Millenio busway system. The city dwellers of Bogota, therefore, have a high accessibility level.


Will people use the public transportation?
A person will naturally choose his or her mode of transportation according to the comfort, safety, reliability, and accessibility of the chosen mode. There are many theories that can explain such phenomenon—e.g. the theories of rational choice and human behavior. The Nobel Laureate Professor Daniel McFadden from the University of California Berkeley, who is an expert in the choice model theory, states that there are many factors that can cause the change from personal vehicles to public transportation. Generally, there are two kinds of factors—i.e. the opposing factor, by arranging so that the use of personal vehicles become too expensive, and the attracting factor, by making the public transportation safe, comfortable, reliable, and accessible. In Singapore, if someone wishes to have a personal vehicle, he or she must submit a bid for a Certificate of Entitlement (COE), as the government sets a quota for personal vehicles each year. The highest bidders are entitled to have their personal vehicles. Taxes pertaining to personal vehicles are increased and parking fees are made expensive. In Japan and several other cities in the developed world, riding your car to the office can be very expensive due to the exorbitant parking rate. All those policies to make the use of personal vehicles expensive must of course be balanced with the provision of reliable, safe, comfortable, efficient, and affordable public transportation services. In this case, fairness can be maintained and accessibility remains opened, as the public are given the options about the modes of transportation that they would like to use, and in what conditions. When there is a party or a formal occasion with your business partners, then you might decide to use your personal car; on other days, however, public transportation might be the preferred choice.

In the household survey conducted by the JICA SITRAMP transportation study in 2003, the inhabitants of the Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi area are mostly concerned about the safety issue in choosing their preferred modes of transportation. This means that the public still perceive our public transportation modes as unsafe. The next issue is comfort. A study conducted by the graduate students of University of Indonesia shows that the employees working at the Thamrin – Sudirman corridor are willing to pay a high price in order to have a more comfortable and safe public transportation. With such a study result, it is clear that there are opportunities for the managers of busway or monorail systems in Jakarta to offer safer and more comfortable modes of transportation, with shorter travel time and more affordable rates.


The key is access, not mobility of vehicles
Traffic jams in the urban areas cannot be handled by applying policies which merely add the total length of roads. The research done by Anthony Downs (1994) and the compilation of studies conducted by Professor Mark Hansen (2000) from the University of California Berkeley show that the addition of new roads in the city center might precisely give rise to heavier traffic and create jams. The key to unraveling the traffic jams is to apply the concept of accessibility, i.e. providing access to the desired destination by minimizing the travels that need to be taken. The essence of the accessibility concept is, first and foremost, to reduce unnecessary travels by stationing the work place near to the places where the city dwellers live, shop, and entertain themselves. If travels are unavoidable, then they should, as much as possible, be conducted on public transportation so that the number of vehicles on the road can be reduced.

Professor Robert Cervero in his book The Transit Metropolis shows that the well-developed cities generally start off from urban planning developments in which the transportation system is well integrated. The development of the urban area will follow the mass transportation routes that have been built. Such transportation-based urban development pattern is called ‘transit oriented development’ (TOD) and has been applied cities such as Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Curitiba. A research conducted by the East Asia Society of Transport Study (EASTS) in 2005 shows that today mega cities in East Asia such as Seoul, Taipei, Bangkok, and Manila are undergoing a re-orientation in its urban development, which now is based on the mass transportation system. This is because city managers do not wish to repeat past mistakes, in which traffic jams had almost invariably been tackled by proposals to build new roads, which eventually created more traffic jams.


Closing
We should return the transportation system to its essence as assistance in building a life that is in harmony with the nature. A humanistic transportation system is essentially not a new concept. Shakespeare asks, “What is a city but its people?” Eventually, we should create a system that is based on the people. We must fulfill the public need for an efficient and fair transportation system. To do that, people must regard vehicles as a part of a bigger transportation system, in which public transportations, bicycles, and walking on foot are alternative modes of transportation that are available.

To be able to make people-based transportation system a reality, we should involve the various components of the society in the execution of transportation system. Public participation would be vital in the planning process, up to the operational and maintenance aspects. To create public participation as much as possible, people should have access to the myriad of information about the planning and developments of transportation system. Therefore, people can participate in the management of transportation system as a whole.





Jakarta, May 2007
Translated by Rani Elsanti




BAMBANG SUSANTONO is the chairman of the Masyarakat Transportasi Indonesia (Indonesia’s Transportation Society), 2004 – 2007. He graduated from Civil Engineering at the Bandung Institute of Technology, and took his graduate degree at the University of California Berkeley, where he finished the MCP program for urban planning, MSCE program for the transportation techniques. He then went on to take his doctorate degree in infrastructure planning, at the same university. He has been working as the expert staff for the Coordinating Minister of Economy and is the secretary of the Coordinating Team for Village Infrastructure, as well as the chairman of the Secretariat for the Policy Committee to Accelerate Infrastructure Development. He is a board member of the East Asia Society of Transportation Studies EASTS (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan), and the SouthsouthNorth Foundation, headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. He teaches and assists graduate students at the Graduate Program in Engineering, University of Indonesia.