Waze, the city navigation app that collects real-time user information on road conditions, released some damning data regarding just how bad the macet (ie traffic jams) were on Jakarta’s roads last year.
The app, which uses raw data from the city’s traffic management system in addition to crowd sourced information, collected all of the information in 2014 to analyze traffic conditions in the city. The result, as we could’ve predicted, shows that 2014 was not a great year for driving in Jakarta.
Here are some pretty ominous stats from Waze, which got us thinking that maybe we’ll ditch our cars and ride a bicycle to get around from now on:
“The average daily speed [for cars] in Jakarta is just under 19 km/h, or comfortable bicycle cruising speed. When you omit the “higher than average” weekend speeds (22 km/h), the daily weekday average drops to below 18 km/h, and it doesn’t matter which day of the week. They’re all bad.”
They say comfortable bicycle cruising speed; we say we can run faster than 19 km/h.
Yes, we’re all doomed to macet on weekends and weekdays. But surely roads are much quieter during public holidays?
Well, there are some public holidays you should think about staying indoors for:
“The most active day of the entire year was October 25, the first day of the Islamic New Year, with a 123% increase in drivers on the road.”
“If you were driving Monday, October 27 in 2014, it would have taken you twice as long (76 minutes) to go just 13km, traveling a leisurely pace of 10 kilometers an hour, just around preferred walking speed for most people. By Halloween Friday, drivers were traveling just over 9 km/h, which most children could outrun.”
And then there’s the small matter of flooding. The number of flood alerts spiked during the monsoon season, showing that the city has not yet been able to find solutions to the annual banjir problem. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Jakartans tend to take their cars out for a spin in the floods:
“On January 15 and 21, 2014, there was a 170% and 188% increase in alerts, the majority of them “Heavy Rain” alerts (quite the understatement).”
“Maybe it’s a different state of mind, or maybe the people in Jakarta using Waze aren’t actually driving, but aiding in the relief effort by reporting the areas near them that are flooded or impassable to help other drivers still stuck on the roads.”
We can only hope that things will get much better in 2015, though we highly doubt it. On the upside, there’s a lot of road and public transportation construction projects happening right now, but that probably means we’ll have to put up with even more macet for the next few years.
Be patient, Jakartans, we’re still far away from having a fully integrated public transportation system that can alleviate all of our macet woes. For now, all we can do is dream about a traffic-free capital.
