The test removal of Jakarta’s decade old “3-in-1” carpooling rule that started on April 5 was supposed to come to an end last week, but last Friday the decision was made to extend the test for another month in order to better assess its impact on traffic.
Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who has been a major proponent of scrapping the 3-in-1 due to concerns about its efficiency and promotion of child abuse, said that the traffic officials had only been monitoring the increased volume of cars on the capital’s major roads where the 3-in-1 system had been in place. He argued that the test need to be extended in order to properly assess how big of an impact it had on overall travel times.
“It had to be extended because before they only measured the volume increase,” Ahok said at Jakarta City Hall last Friday as quoted by CNN Indonesia.
The police have indeed warned that there has been a significant increase in congestion on Jakarta’s main roads without the 3-in-1, but many smaller alternative roads have reportedly seen decreases in traffic. There was also reportedly a small uptick in the number of TransJakarta bus users during the test, but not as much as officials like Ahok probably hoped for.
However, PT TransJakarta announced today that they would be adding 600 new single buses and 51 articulated buses to their routes in an effort to improve wait times on the Busway.
“It was one of the results of our evaluation meeting on extending the 3-in-1 test removal until May 14, 2016,” explained Jakarta Transportation Department Head Andri Yansyah this morning as quoted by Detik.
Andri said that the of extension of the trial period needed to be done in conjunction with improvements in mass transit services, including better efforts to keep the busway clear of private vehicles.
Out of all of the new buses, 125 have been earmarked for Corridor 1 (Blok M-Kota) and the rest will be distributed throughout the TransJakarta network.
With the new additions, the number of buses on TransJakarta Corridor 1 will nearly double to 247. The President Director of PT Transjakarta, Budi Kaliwono said that the increase should significanly slash wait times.
“With a number like that, we believe it will only take half a minute for a bus to pass every stop,” Budi said, as quoted by Kompas.
