Traffic jams, locally known as macet, is one of the biggest problems that has been plaguing the capital for many years. It stands to reason then that the topic of macet would play a large part in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election.
Sandiaga Uno, vice governor nominee and running mate of Anies Baswedan, shared his solution to Jakarta’s seemingly never ending macet woes to the press. One policy that he would like to enforce, should he and Anies take office, is a temporary moratorium on luxury cars.
“I’m the first to come up with the moratorium on luxury cars. There are enough luxury vehicles in Jakarta,” he said, as quoted by Merdeka yesterday.
“Cars [valued at] Rp 3 billion or more would be banned. There are so many luxury cars driving around Jakarta and it’s time [for the drivers and owners] to switch to public transport.”
Like Sandiaga, we too believe that restrictions on the number of vehicles able to drive on Jakarta’s roads are necessary to reduce macet. But would we really see a difference if Rp 3 billion+ cars were to suddenly disappear from Jakarta?
According to the 2015 Transportation Statistics of Jakarta, which was compiled by the Jakarta Statistics Agency based on numbers from the previous year, there were 3.26 million registered cars in Jakarta in 2014. While the stats do not reveal the types and values of the cars, it’s hard to imagine that any more than a miniscule amount of them are luxury cars worth Rp 3 billion or more.
To put things into perspective, out of the 10 most popular cars in Indonesia in the first quarter of 2016 according to automotive publication Oto, none has an on-the-road price exceeding Rp 300 million. The Toyota Avanza, which topped the list, is valued at around Rp 200 million.
Thankfully, Sandiaga’s idea to ban luxury cars, which he said would only be enforced for a year as a form of “shock therapy” so people would switch to public transportation, is only one of several plans he has to combat macet. He also posed the idea of increasing vehicle taxes, as well as going forward with plans to install Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) technology in some of Jakarta’s busiest roads – a technology that the current administration is already working on implementing.
