Congestion in Jakarta, What To Do With?

By: Hermawan Patrianto
Capital Region of Jakarta (DKI Jakarta, Jakarta Raya), with an area of 740.20 km2 and a population totaling 9.6 million (2010) with 23 million people population of Greater Jakarta metropolitan, has grown into the largest metropolitan area in Indonesia or to order six of the world. Now the greater Jakarta area have been integrated with the Bandung Raya, has placed the region at number-two in the world, after megapolis New York, Shanghai, Berlin and Hong Kong. This means that Jakarta must be ready to anticipate any negative impact the development of its territory, from the readiness of the macro-political and readiness of the micro- technical aspects.

As a capital state with all its charm, Jakarta experienced physical development and very quickly socio-economics growth, even to exceed the carrying capacity of its territory. As a result, Jakarta is now faced with various problems, ranging from demographic problems, flooding, traffic congestion, pollution, crime, lack of clean water, electricity supply crisis, waste management to other social problems.

Among these problems, congestion problems is one of the main problems in Jakarta. The impact is large, so that the handling of congestion problems should be top priority. Due to congestion, not just the loss of the time but also resulted in material damages are estimated to reach trillions of rupiah. Millions of cars and motorcycles filled the streets, of course, cause loss. Studies ever undertaken: the Study on Integrated Transportation Master Plan for Greater Jakarta (SITRAMP 2004) has been count losses due to congestion in Jakarta at Rp 8.3 trillion. Losses would include three aspects: first, loss of vehicle operating cost of Rp 3 trillion, the loss of time to Rp 2.5 trillion, and health impacts caused by PM10 particles amounting to Rp 2.8 trillion. In 2010, congestion is getting worse, and of course the value of the losses were already getting bigger.

Jakarta has now become a city with high levels of pollutants, emissions of motor vehicles contributed 80% of pollution in Jakarta, while the remaining 20% comes from industry. Air pollution in Jakarta is the worst in all of Indonesia. In a global scale, Jakarta is a city with the worst pollution level number three in the world (after Mexico city and Thailand). Furthermore (still on a global scale), concentration of dust particles (particulate matter) contained in the air in Jakarta was the highest number 9 (ie 104 mikrogram/m3) of 111 world cities surveyed by the World Bank in 2004.

Another reason for the increasing rate of pollution in Jakarta is the lack of green open space (green space) of the city. City green space is part of the open spaces in urban area filled with plants, vegetation (endemic, introduction) to support the benefits of direct and/or indirectly generated by the city's green space in the security, comfort , welfare, and the beauty of urban areas.