Tidung Island in Pulau Seribu
Hopefully you all know about Pulau Seribu aka the Thousand Islands, the misleadingly named chain of 110 islands just to the north of mainland Jakarta (actually Pulau Seribu technically makes up two of Jakarta’s subdistricts).
Many of the Thousand Islands are lovely little vacation spots with inviting beaches, but relatively few Jakartans actually go out to them. Heading out to Pulau Seribu, especially some of the nicer islands further north, can be prohibitively expensive for many Jakartans since they have to hire private boats to take them.
Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama wants to change that by hiring boats that would be publicly subsidized to create a regular transportation network between the islands and the mainland, allowing people to people to go out to the Thousand Islands for much more reasonable price. He said it would work similarly to the way the government subsidizes the TransJakarta busway system.
“We want to pay vessel owner to use a rupiah per kilometer system, so they are paid whether there are passengers or not, they will still go,” Ahok said today as quoted by Vivanews.
Ahok said his administration was currently studying the plan. He said it could also greatly help people living in Pulau Seribu (which has a population of over 20,000 in total) by decreasing their costs of living, since food and other supplies could be distributed more easily if their was a network of subsidized boats traveling the islands.
