This is my last week on Jakarta and I have to say, I am really grateful about it. Why? For the last 6 months, you can consider me as one amongst thousands of motorist trapped on deadlock traffic as shown on above image.
I was working on Sudirman, quite busy office district in Center – South Jakarta border which is merely ~10 mins walk to Bunderan HI, a famous landmark of Jakarta. However, my home is 26 kilometres away.
Technically, if you ride anything which resulted on average 26 km per hour of speed, you will spend an hour on the road. However, that’s not really true on the practice. My record was 3 and half hours for only 26 km of distance. Which means, LESS than third of average speed. For 3.5 hours, I need to battle hot weather, sweat, CO2 smoke and emotional feeling by understanding that you will go nowhere in a minute or two.
I have a brother who can considered as an avid motorist. He drove his motor to his office since 2001. He said that Jakarta in 2001 was really empty. Same distance covered only in 25 to 30 minutes, less fatigue and less chance to be killed on duty. However, urbanisation to Jakarta is uncontrollable and people start their family outside the Jakarta, e.g. Tangerang, Bekasi, Depok even Bogor. Slow commuter and not enough Busway corridor motivate people to buy cheaper-than-ever motor and start to be a motorist. Plus, it was very easy to get a driving license at that time caused everyone to officially eligible to ride motor every day every night.
Well, traffic is a sign of a ache or disease of a city. If that’s true (you have to agree with me on this), then Jakarta only have couple of days to live from this disease. That’s my opinion on how bad, how monstrous traffic in Jakarta can be.