The Jakarta Provincial Government has made clear its desire for citizens to ditch their vehicles in favor of public transportation in order to help solve the city’s out-of-control traffic problems.
It looks the government may take drastic measures to force people into eventually using public transportation, such as charging an exorbitant amount for people to park their vehicles in parking lots.
“We will pull all the stops to decrease the number of people using private vehicles. One of the ways to do that is to introduce high fares for off-street parking. It could even go as high as Rp 50,000 an hour,” said Andri Yansyah, head of Jakarta’s Transportation Agency, as quoted by Warta Kota yesterday.
That would be about a tenfold increase from the current parking rate at most Jakartan malls, which charge around Rp 5,000 an hour.
However, Andri assured the public that this proposition would not be implemented any time soon, at least not before the MRT and LRT become operational in 2018 and the city improves on current public transportation options like buses.
But once we have a decent public transportation system, would you be willing to pay Rp 50,000 an hour for parking?
