Just a little more than three months after the Indonesian government gave China the rights to the $5.5 billion dollar Jakarta-Bandung fast train project, the fast-tracked project is ready to officially begin construction with a groundbreaking ceremony taking place today that will be attended by President Joko Widodo and Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama.
The first piece of the long-in-the-works train project, which is expected to reduce travel time between the cities to 35 minutes, will be a stone laid down by President Jokowi himself in West Bandung’s Cikalong Wetan.
Among the many steps made to ensure that construction on the fast-train project could be finished by 2018 (before the next presidential elections), Governor Ahok decided to postpone construction on a corridor of the planned light rail transit (LRT) system that would stretch from Kelapa Gading to Kebayoran Lama.”The LRT can be postponed, because from the months of June-July they will be working on (construction) of the fast train. We do not want there to be overlap,” Ahok said some time ago as quoted by Kompas.
Cabinet Secretary Pramono Agung also said that permits from the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry,as well as construction permits from the governors, regents and mayors, whose land would be crossed by the railway line had all already been obtained. An environmental impact study has also already been completed.
If everything goes according to plan, the fast train will be operational by the first half of 2019. The train’s route will run from Halim in Jakarta until Tegalur in Bandung.
