Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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Figure 6: Traffic sign before entering 3 in 1 area
For many reasons, fuel subsidy is considered to be a bad policy as it appears to disproportionately
favour the wealthy who have more cars, which is the case in Indonesia. However, in Indonesia, fuel
price strongly affects prices of everyday goods in general. Therefore, increasing fuel price affects the
poor the worst, because they barely have enough money to buy basic needs. Attempts to reduce fuel
subsidy are usually met with big protests by the general population.
Motorcycles have the highest mode share of all transport modes in Jakarta, due to the following
reasons:
- no proper public transport
- ease to manoeuvre through congested roads
- ease to get financed to lease a motorcycle (with a down payment of as little as USD 30)
- lowoperational andmaintenance costs (monthly cost of motorcycles is 38% cheaper than that
of using public transport)
- important for status and image
Currently, there is no policy applied with a goal to reduce the private vehicles ownership rate in
Jakarta. Such policy is under the authority of the Central Government and they will not simply take the
easy way out to tackle this issue. Accounting for around 7% of the country’s gross domestic product,
the automotive and supporting industries are one of the most important sectors in Indonesia’s story
of economic growth. Castrating the automotive industry also means putting millions of jobs in
jeopardy.
The yearly increase of the number of private vehicles has therefore been accepted as a given situation
in Jakarta. As indicated in the Transport Master Plan (2007-2020), traffic restriction has been and will
be implemented to reduce the use of private vehicles and increase the use of public transport. It
includes four measures, i.e.
1. Motorized vehicles restriction in certain areas or certain time, e.g. 3 in 1 (minimum 3 occupants
per car) that has been implemented since 2003 (see Figure 15), and since 2014 motorcycles are
forbidden in certain Central Business District areas.
2. Electronic Road Pricing, which is currently being prepared to replace the 3 in 1 strategy that has
low effectiveness due to violations where car owners pay people to reach the minimum car
occupancy.
3. Parking strategy: currently Jakarta does not have a concrete and strict parking strategy yet.
Parking fees in Jakarta are the second lowest worldwide, which encourages people to use their
cars.
4. Provision of Park and Ride facilities at public transport terminals, which has been started since
the operation of TransJakarta.
Source: Consultant