Local governments are expected to provide budget commitments for public transportation and give priority to public transportation in metropolitan street spaces.
By
SATRIO PANGARSO WISANGGENI, MARGARETHA PUTERI ROSALINA, ALBERTUS KRISNA
·7 minutes read
KOMPAS/AMBROSIUS HARTO
Suroboyo Bus crossing Jalan Raya Darmo, Surabaya, East Java, Thursday (4/11/2021). The Suroboyo Bus serves the Purabaya - Rajawali route which is the first route since April 7 2018.
JAKARTA, KOMPAS — Public transportation networks in Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya offer limited coverage. The administrations of the four metropolises on the island of Java have not prioritized public transportation as a public service for their residents. There has been no commitment to build suitable public transit networks, whether in terms of their budgets or readying roads to prioritize public transportation.
Analyzing the data on mass transit services in Semarang, Surabaya, Bandung and Yogyakarta, as well as the surrounding urban areas, show that many residents in the four cities are still not being served by public transportation. Of the four cities, the best public transportation coverage is found in Greater Bandung. Public transportation services cover as many as 3.8 million people, or 79.3 percent of the area’s population. This is followed by Yogyakarta with transportation coverage for 1 million people (74.4 percent), Greater Semarang with 1.7 million people or 62.1 percent, and Greater Surabaya 2.7 million people or 58.6 percent.
This data was obtained by analyzing overlapping service areas on a number of maps, including maps on public transportation facilities such as bus rapid transit (BRT) shelters, Teman Bus stops, local train stations, and public transportation routes. The data was gathered from the Moovit public transportation app and the transportation office of each city.
Bus stops and train stations are arranged with a radius of 1 kilometer with routes located 500 meters at the closest distance to provide residential access to public transportation. The data was then superimposed on the map of high-density population areas from the 2015 Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) project. Areas that fall within the radius of bus stops, train stations and public minivan routes are included in the category of public transportation network coverage.
Even though Bandung has the highest coverage for public transportation networks, 94.3 percent of its transit services still use conventional transportation modes. Mass transit systems, such as Trans Metro Bandung, only serve 60.9 percent of the population. Likewise, 2.3 million residents of Greater Surabaya are covered by the city’s public transportation networks. Records show that 89.9 percent of residents are still served by conventional public transportation modes, while only 49.2 percent are served by transit buses and commuter trains.
Better conditions were found in Yogyakarta and Semarang. Public transportation networks in the two cities respectively serve 93.8 percent and 89.2 percent of their residents.
Commitment
The budget-to-revenue ratio (PAD) for BRT operations can reflect the level of commitment among the local administrations in Surabaya, Bandung, Semarang, and Yogyakarta to providing mass transit services for its residents. The PAD ratio is used as a benchmark because it shows the original fiscal capacity of the regions.
The two cities with the narrowest BRT coverage, namely Bandung and Surabaya, are also the two cities with the lowest disbursements of their BRT operating budget. Trans Metro Bandung realized disbursements of Rp 5.8 billion, or just 0.6 percent of its 2020 PAD. In Surabaya, funds of Rp 59.7 billion (1.1 percent of PAD) were disbursed to Suroboyo Bus.
Meanwhile, the Yogyakarta provincial administration disbursed Rp 87.1 billion, or about 4.6 percent of its PAD, to Trans Jogja, while the 2020 operating budget of Trans Semarang reached Rp 164.2 billion, or 6.5 percent of the Semarang PAD.
Aside from the number of residents covered, the coverage area is reflected in how many corridors each city’s BRT service operates. Trans Metro Bandung operates three corridors, Suroboyo Bus operates four corridors, including one served by a double-decker bus, Trans Jogja operates 17 routes, while Trans Semarang operates nine main corridors and three feeder routes.
ALBERTUS KRISNA
The Trans Metro Bandung bus passes at one of the bus stops on Jalan Diponegoro, Bandung City on Monday (7/3/2022)..
Transportation expert Hera Widyastuti from Surabaya’s 10 November Institute of Technology believed that the coverage, quality, fleet size, and limited infrastructure of the cities’ public transportation services reflected the administrations’ low budgets and commitment to providing the service.
“In Surabaya, for example, there are already north-south and east-west corridors. However, these are still lacking, as they have not yet reached other activity centers," she said.
For example, said Hera, the Tanjung Perak Port district, SIER Industrial Estate, and CitraLand developed township were still not adequately served by public transportation to the present day.
In comparison, transportation subsidies for TransJakarta reached 5.7 percent of Jakarta's PAD in 2020, or around Rp 3.29 trillion.
Land Transportation Director General Budi Setiyadi at the Transportation Ministry said that Jakarta’s ratio of the public transportation budget to PAD could be said to be close to the ideal figure. He also deemed that the Semarang city administration’s budgetary allocation for public transportation reflected its high commitment to providing the service.
According to Budi, the perception still prevailed that public transportation must benefit the local administration. "Local administrations and the local Regional Legislative Councils (DPRDs) sometimes view public transportation as a business, not as a public service," he said.
The head of the technical implementation unit (UPT) at Trans Semarang, Hendrix Setiawan, said that providing affordable public transportation such as the Trans Semarang was indicative of the administration’s strong political will. "The BRT must be cheap, because this was is one of the mayor's [campaign] promises," he said.
Hera said that local DPRDs sometimes still looked at public transportation as a potential revenue source to fund their PAD. However, public transportation affected the lives of many people, so local administrations needed to provide the service to the public.
"If an administration is required to contribute or even generate profit from [public] transportation services, it would not dare disburse a large budget for public transportation," she pointed out.
The Surabaya administration felt pressured for its BRT service to contribute to its PAD. The head of the Surabaya Transportation Office, Tunjung Iswandaru, said the target was to generate Rp 10 billion in annual revenue.
The Yogyakarta provincial administration also received negative responses to the public transport budget. The head of the Yogyakarta Transportation Office, Ni Made Dwi Panti Indrayanti, said that many parties still commented that the Trans Jogja budget only burdened the region’s finances.
ALBERTUS KRISNA
An officer gives a signal to the Trans Jakarta Bus driver about passengers departing from one of the bus stops on Jalan Malioboro on Friday (4/3/2022).
This situation, according to Budi, had prompted certain administrations to adopt the government’s “buy the service” (BTS) scheme. Through the BTS scheme, the central government covered the operating costs of local transportation operators on behalf of the local administration, with the costs calculated by rupiah per kilometer.
Since the scheme was launched in 2020, there are now 11 cities served by buses under the BTS scheme. For cities that already operate BRT services, BTS buses are integrated with the existing public transportation network.
Red carpet
Besides a commitment to disbursing the public transportation budget, Budi also believed it was time for regional administrations to implement a push strategy to encourage residents to switch from using private vehicles to using public transportation. This was especially relevant for regional administrations that receive BTS assistance from the central government.
Even in the memorandum of understanding on BTS that had been signed between the Land Transportation Directorate General and local administrations, that local administrations implement a push strategy to promote public transportation was one of the points in the agreement. This strategy could be implemented by imposing traffic restrictions, such as the odd-even rule or time restrictions, giving priority to public buses during peak hours, as well as constructing special lanes such as busways.
“Roll out a red carpet for our public transportation," said Budi.
However, not all cities with BTS services have implemented a comprehensive push strategy. Tundjung said Surabaya was still in the process of studying its push strategy. This was because Surabaya was not very congested, he said.
Roll out a red carpet for our public transportation.
The Bandung administration has the same stance. The head of transportation planning and evaluation at the Bandung Transportation Office, Santi Prianti, said the city had implemented a push strategy by increasing roadside parking fees.
“Other policies are planned, but have not been implemented yet. We are still concentrating on the pull strategy," she said.
In Yogyakarta, a push strategy has been implemented by imposing a motor vehicle-free policy in Malioboro from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. The chairman of the Yogyakarta branch of the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda), Hantoro, said that one policy that the Yogyakarta provincial administration could impose as part of its push strategy was to ask students and civil servants to use Trans Jogja.
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