For now, we can probably safely say Jakarta is not synonymous with maddening macet (traffic jams) — at least compared to previous years and with other major urban centers — as Governor Anies Baswedan is beaming with optimism after the capital is no longer among the world’s most traffic congested cities.
Geolocation technology specialist TomTom recently released its 2021 Traffic Index, in which Jakarta came 46th out of 404 cities surveyed. The Indonesian capital city scored a congestion level of 34 percent in 2021, which represents a 19 percent decrease from 2019 and 2 percent decrease from 2020.
In the same index, Jakarta was one of the top five congested cities in the world in 2017.
“Imagine, in five years we went from the fourth congested city in the world to 46th now,” Anies said in a virtual discussion on public transportation yesterday.
Congestion levels in Jakarta have undoubtedly been impacted by COVID-19 restrictions over the past couple of years. To be fair, however, most cities in the index have also had restrictions that should impact traffic congestion as well.
Anies said most of the credit goes to the increasing numbers of people of Jakarta who are ditching private vehicles in favor of public transportation.
The provincial government is committed to expanding public transportation networks and the number of vehicles to meet rising demand, the governor added.
Among the capital’s major plans going forward is expanding the TransJakarta bus fleet, which is also targeted to be 50 percent electric by 2025. Jakarta is aiming towards a net-zero transmission goal by 2050.
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