It is difficult to estimate just how badly Jakarta’s terrible traffic affects the lives of the people who live here. The stress and frustration of millions of people having to sit in maddening macet is incalculable, but the you can at least give a rough estimate of how much the traffic costs us in terms of things like fuel costs, health care due to air pollution, lost productivity, etc.
And according to the Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) if you add up all the various prices we have to pay because of the capital’s catastrophic traffic, the sum is about Rp 150 trillion per year – which is almost half of annual education budget for Indonesia.
Due to the rapidly increasing number of cars and motorcycles on Jakarta’s roads, that number will continue to increase in the future unless the government is successful at providing better public transportation option and, crucially, getting Jakartans to actually switch to them instead of using private vehicles.
Jakarta Transportation Agency Head Andri Yansyah said they had made some progress in that area – arguing that the government has converted 13 percent of private vehicle users to public transport over the past few years. However, they are still far from their goal of converting 60 percent of private vehicle users.
One of the ways that Andri said his agency was hoping to convert more people was to cooperate with numerous malls throughout the city to create “park and ride” facilities that would make it easier for people to park their cars and proceed by public transport. They were also planning new bus routes around public housing centers to make it easier for residents to use the Transjakarta.
