Jammed Jakarta – thoughts on traffic in a working class city in a developing country

Indonesia’s international rep: indifferent or ignorant?

In the three weeks between Easter and arriving, I underwent the annual right of passage faced by millions of post secondary students in North America in writing final exams. Always ready to use an excuse to procrastinate from studying, reading travel blogs and websites quickly became a new hobby. Between watching streamed episodes of Battlestar Galactica and trying not to be lulled to sleep in reading administrative law cases, I was surprised by the relative dearth of materials on Jakarta.

As a region, South-East Asia (SEA) has become a backpackers’ mecca among friends and colleagues– just look to the map people can put on their FB where you can pin what counties you’ve visited – SEA countries are pinned as often as NYC or Canadian March Break Special Sun Spots like Cuba. SEA countries possess a GDP/capita hovering between $2,000-$4,000 which allows tourists to lounge, surf, travel, eat out and generally enjoy life. Despite all this, with the notable exception of Bali and a few other islands, Indonesia was hardly mentioned. Indeed some travel blogs went so far as to state that Jakarta especially should be avoided. What gives? Surely one of the factors is Jakarta’s deplorable traffic situation.

Jammed Jakarta

(It was brought to my attention that the link to the original site of the photo that was here was broken and has since disappeared so I have deleted it. Thanks for letting me know!)
The greater city of Jakarta, with a population of over 20 million, has an official city plan which provides for 1 million vehicles yet has at least 1.5 million on the roads and those are the ones that are officially registered. “Vehicles” should be defined loosely – motorcycle varities by the dozen, foodstalls being transported by foot mounted on bicycle wheels, cars, an assortment of taxis including (orange three wheeled rickshaws), 1970 era heavy steel buses that bear a strange resemble to troop transport vehicles and mikrolets (think a mini van missing the side door that runs a loop and picks you up and drops you off where you wish).

A bajaj – hop in and hold on!

Ojeks, the small motorcycle taxis, offer an inexpensive mode of transportation and dart in and out of traffic, driving occasionally along sidewalks and on the wrong side of the road when convenient. Though I should note that my ojek experience seemed to confirm that there truly is no such things as a free lunch. Feeling adventurous one morning, I wrapped a t shirt around my face (in a vain attempt to prevent myself form inhaling too many particulates) and took an ojek ride to work. Though cheap and relatively quick my driver had no idea of the downtown core and we spent the better part of 2 hours circling talking to random security guards and cops about how to get there while I finished 5 podcasts scolding myself for trying to save $1.34 by not taking a taxi.

Traffic circles become so jammed pushing in to get a spot becomes a Darwinist choice: put your nose out and cut in lest everyone behind lays on their horn to the point that you can’t think straight. Since buses stop wherever the knock on effects are incredible. The fumes from all these vehicles, coupled with an already incredibly hot and humid climate, create a sort of noxious cloud that sits permanently in the air. Sitting in traffic and wondering to what extent the air filters in the 2008 Toyota taxi remove these particulates for the air I’m breathing, I often try to ask myself what would the quality of life be like for those in Jakarta had they foregone industrialization? I then use this to conclude that almost inevitably the price of development and industrialization is considerable pollution. I try to comfort myself that many developed countries had similar issues during their respective phase of industrialization and that, as predicted by the Kuznets curve, as incomes rise and living standards improve, public goods such as the environment, can be given greater priority among competing demands on policy makers. Still, all the traffic means the air is consistently awful.

Traffic is almost unimaginable during the peak commuting times. Our 14 kilometers commute takes between 45 minutes and up to 2 hours depending on weather conditions, day of the week and seemingly, sheer luck. The economist argues that Jakarta loses $1 billion annually due to traffic congestion, an estimate that may seem small compared the $5 billion loss Toronto suffers annually, as recently cited by the Toronto Board of Trade, except with a GDP/capita of almost 1/20th Canadian standards the marginal impact of Jakarta’s loss is significantly magnified. Though solutions abound, few are able to materialize.

Transit woes

The Transjakarta, a mass public transit project that runs air conditioned, reasonably priced buses using dedicated lanes, has alleviated some of the congestion. However, despite barriers separating the lanes and the booming bus horn, motorcycles and cars weave in and out of the lane with impunity rendering buses, and their passengers, to be snared in the same traffic as everyone else. This is considerably that some projects, such as a planned metro line which was announced to much fanfare, were never implemented and remain purely conceptual.

Between these two options lies those projects that remain partially completed. The monorail project, for instance, was commissioned in 2005 and construction efforts ensued along the city’s main arteries. Hundreds of large (1 m x 1 m ) concrete pillars were built, reaching 6 m in height and including large hunks of steel rebar reaching to the sky reaching an additional 6 m. Unfortunately, the project was abandoned due to a deteriorating financial market in 2008 and a myriad of murkier reasons which in a country often ranked as being among the most corrupt in the world, is probably not that hard to ascertain. The result: a scar of perfectly distanced concrete boxes that cuts along the city’s main thoroughfares and are more reminiscent of an urbanist’s critical work of art than a failed infrastructure project in one of the world’s most populous cities. Waiting for the Transjakarta one night, I watched as a tropical rainstorm lashed one of the pillars moving the rebar slightly. Around the base of the pillar, pooling water mixed with street garbage and oil began to flow unabated into the overflow canals headed, so face as we could see, straight to the ocean. I could only begin to imagine the sorts of tradeoffs policy makers face when deciding how to prioritize spending.

As other Asian cities have been able, or at least moving toward implementing solutions to solve such traffic quandaries, Jakarta besieged by the issues of funding, governance issues and a lack of political will (thanks for the link Simon). Congestion charges or higher prices for gasoline, economically efficient solutions I haven’t talked about, are not seem as politically viable, meaning for the foreseeable future, transit in Jakarta is seemingly doomed to remain an intractable issue.

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