Busway lanes for all buses
6th February 2006
I refer to your editorial on Jan. 21 "Toward better transportation and an article on Busway vs. monorail' by Siti Nurlaela.
With the addition of two more routes to the busway system, the Jakarta City Administration has taken another welcome step in the direction of mass transportation. But whenever I have seen the frequency of service on the Blok M to Kota route at 7 in the evening, just after the 3-in-1 time, I have always felt that the utilization of the special "busway" lane is very low while the other lanes are choked with vehicular traffic.
Distribution of traffic is far from equitable and car users suffer in bumper-to-bumper traffic while Trans-Jakarta buses travel with a gap time of five to 10 minutes between them. A good idea would be to route all the bus traffic through the busway lane wherever it is laid. In other words, on these routes all the buses (including the 25-to 30-seater Metrominis and 10-to 15-seater minivans, must use the busway lanes only.
Whatever needs to be done to achieve this goal should be done by enacting new laws and enforcing them. Maybe all small buses should be scrapped and only Trans-Jakarta type of buses should replace them. This will result in lanes outside the busway lanes being used only by non-bus traffic including trucks.
This will help in more ways than one. Apart from the decongestion of the traffic, it will also reduce the lawless driving indulged in by the Metromini buses and minivans which can be seen in all suburban traffic of Jakarta like Printis Kemerdekaan and Pulogadung area.
On roads where there is no busway lane laid as yet, the traffic rules can remain unchanged.
K.B. KALE, Jakarta
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