The metro, light rail, airport link – and a planned bullet train from Bandung 100 miles to the east – will centre on a new hub at Dukuh Atas. Excess passengers no longer ride on the roof or hang out of the doors after a recent crackdown, but inside the carriages the rush hour crush is as bad as ever. Jakarta’s ageing Commuter Line trains make the journey from Bogor to the city centre in 55 minutes – twice as fast as the car. The new network should boost rail capacity from 800,000 to 1.2 million passengers a day. A second line running east-west, where many journeys are made, is under consideration.Ī long-awaited link from the airport is set to start operating next year and the first phase of a light rail system is due to open in 2018, in time for the Asian Games. Commuter Line trains make the journey from Bogor to the city centre in 55 minutes – twice as fast as the carĪ northern extension to Kampung Bandan near the waterfront is set to open in 2020. But four decades after it was first mooted, construction has at last begun on Jakarta’s $1.7bn (£1.4bn) metro line, known as Mass Rapid Transit (MRT).ĭifficulties acquiring land rights in the south of the city have delayed the overground section of the project but, when the first stage opens in 2019, it is set to halve the hour it takes to travel 12 miles from Lebak Bulus to Bunderan Hotel Indonesia in the centre by car. Regional rivals Manila (1984), Singapore (1987), Kuala Lumpur (1995) and Bangkok (2004), all got there first. Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images The largest south-east Asian city without a metro A recent crackdown means excess passengers no longer ride on the roof, or hang out of the doors, but inside the carriages the rush hour crush is as bad as ever. His food delivery business is now Asia’s largest outside China, and the Go-Jek also offers makeovers, theatre tickets, flowers, prescription medicines …Ī commuter train in East Jakarta in 2012. As well as getting around, customers can get a massage therapist or a cleaner delivered to their door within 90 minutes. The app has been downloaded 25 million times. Along with Malaysian rival Grab, and Uber’s Motor service, they have driven down fares – to the anger of some drivers. Since Makarim’s company revolutionised the motorcycle taxi – or ojek – industry with the launch of a smartphone app last year, numbers have risen dramatically. There’s no reason for cars to exist in this city at all.”
“Motorbikes are twice the speed of a car in Jakarta, they use a 10th of the fuel, are a 10th of the cost and use far less space,” says Nadiem Makarim, founder and chief executive of Go-Jek, the city’s two-wheeled version of Uber. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images Scooter city: ‘You can get anything delivered by bike here’ Is Jakarta destined to be jammed forever, or does the city have an alternative?Ī motorcycle taxi for smartphone app Go-Jek picks up a customer. With the population of Greater Jakarta expected to increase from about 30 million today to more than 40 million by 2040, wasting hours trapped in traffic looks set to become even more of a daily frustration for residents.
“Jockeys” would stand at the side of the road, offering themselves for rent so the driver could get the required two passengers many were children, who took huge risks getting into the vehicles of strangers. Odd/even came in after a three-in-one car-pooling rule was scrapped in April after years of abuse. There are often more passengers on motorbikes than in carsĮfforts to reduce car use are limited to an odd/even scheme on the main thoroughfare of Sudirman and few other key routes during rush hour: vehicles with odd numbered plates are allowed on odd dates, with even plates on even dates. It seems there are often more passengers on the bikes than in the cars. As cars idle in endless queues, scooters slalom past, missing by inches. It typically takes two hours to drive 25 miles to the centre from Bogor, the largest of the satellite cities, where many office workers live.
An estimated 70% of the city’s air pollution comes from vehicles. Jakarta was named the world city with the worst traffic in one index last year based on satellite navigation data, which found the average driver starting and stopping more than 33,000 times in a year.