BRT Changes City Transportation

KOMPAS/AGUS SUSANTO

Cranes install girder sections along the Cawang-Cibubur route of the Jabodebek light rail transit (LRT) on Sunday (01/20/2019) above the Pasar Rebo interchange in East Jakarta. The LRT network, including the Cawang-Cibubur and Bekasi-Cawang routes, is to be integrated with the TransJakarta bus rapid transit (BRT) to provide the capital’s residents with an intermodal transportation service.

JAKARTA, KOMPAS — The TransJakarta bus system has significantly improved the transportation in the capital over the past 15 years. The bus system has also been adopted in other cities in the country. However, not all are working well.

In January 2004, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) public transportation system was officially launched in Jakarta. Operating under the TransJakarta name, it first served the dedicated Blok M-Kota Corridor 1 linking North and South Jakarta.

The TransJakarta is far from perfect. To date, the integration of its dedicated corridors with other public transportation has not reached 100 percent as was expected. However, its achievements over 15 years are still deemed relatively successful. It now has 13 of the initially targeted 15 corridors.

In addition, it has attained 58 percent accessibility through hundreds of routes outside Jakarta. With its wide range of services, including its integration with the Commuter Line trains, TransJakarta has become an attractive alternative for those who do not want to take private vehicles to become caught in severe traffic jams.

At fares of Rp 3,500 per person and dependable service, the service is appealing to the capital’s residents, who are proud of it. They have become accustomed to lining up at the busway shelters to embark and disembark.

As the newest transportation system in the last 15 years, the Jakarta BRT encouraged changes in people\'s transportation habits, PT Transportasi Jakarta (TransJakarta) president director Agung Wicaksono said in an interview on Tuesday.

Local administrations are fully involved in providing public transportation. With the government subsidy, public transportation fares are more affordable, and the service is comfortable and safe. This has drawn other cities in the country to adopt the BRT system, and the Transportation Ministry has included the BRT among its infrastructure development projects for urban public transport.

Trans Semarang

Since it began operating in 2009, the Trans Semarang BRT in Semarang, Central Java, has built seven corridors. Trans Semarang has a fleet of 153 buses provided through the Transportation Ministry, the Central Java provincial administration and a consortium.

"If you take regular public buses, you have to change buses several times and its complicated, but with the BRT, you need only take one [bus]," 17-year-old Alex Bima, a SMKN 7 Semarang vocational senior high school student, said on Friday. Tickets are very cheap: only Rp 1,000 for students and Rp 3,500 for the general public.

The head of the Trans Semarang UPTD BLU public service unit, Ade Bhakti Ariawan, said the 2019 operational costs for Trans Semarang would Rp 140 billion, of which Rp 112 billion would come from the provincial budget (APBD). On Jan. 9, 2019, the Semarang municipal administration launched a Rp 10 billion project to install fuel-to-natural gas conversion kits in 72 Trans Semarang buses in cooperation with the Japanese city of Toyama.

The benefits of using the more environmentally friendly natural gas includes lower vehicle emissions. Soegijapranata Catholic University transportation researcher Djoko Setijowarno said that compared to the BRT in other cities, the Trans Semarang was much better. However, further integration of existing public transport was needed to avoid wasting the provincial budget and for generating income.

Reduced services

Meanwhile, the Trans Sarbagita service in Denpasar, Bali, is shrinking. Of the 25 buses it operated in 2014, only 10 buses are still running. Some residents said the bus transportation system was very helpful, although they complained that the shelters were poorly maintained and the buses were often late. "The bus shelters are unclean and hot," said Wayan Putra, a student in Denpasar.

The Trans Sarbagita has been operating since 2011 using buses provided by the Transportation Ministry under a project for improving regional BRT systems. After several evaluations, the Denpasar BRT was deemed unprofitable and a waste of the government budget due to high maintenance costs and employee salaries.

"This year, the government is orientated towards public services and not profit. Students can ride for free. For the general public, the fare is only Rp 3,500 per person,” the head of the Bali provincial transportation agency, I Gusti Agung Sudarsana, said on Sunday.

The Trans Bandarlampung has a similar story. The BRT in the capital of Lampung province, which originally served seven corridors, serves only the Rajabasa-Panjang corridor today. Passengers get on and off the bus directly, and not at bus shelters. They do not purchase tickets, but pay their fares directly to the bus conductor.

The head of the traffic department at the Bandar Lampung Transportation Agency, Iskandar Zulkarnain, explained that a private company managed the BRT since the start of its operations. The BRT service was halted, as the revenues could not cover its high operational cost. In the end, some of the BRT buses were sold to third parties.

Not a smart system

The Jakarta administration has taken over the management of public transportation, including the TransJakarta. However, transport associate Gandrie Ramadhan at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) said that according to ITDP standards, only the TransJakarta could be called a BRT.

A BRT transportation system must have a comprehensive network of dedicated corridors, an off-board ticketing system for purchasing tickets at bus shelters, large-capacity buses and must have bus priority.

The failure of several cities in public transportation management, including the BRT system, indicates that most cities in the country were not ready to adopt the smart city concept, according to Institute of Transportation Studies (Instran) researcher Deddy Herlambang. He said that the residents of cities with a smart transportation system would no longer consider using private vehicles.

Land transportation director general Budi Setiyadi of the transportation ministry said on Saturday that a city could succeed in managing a BRT system if it had fulfilled a number of requirements, with the first being infrastructure.

The ministry had provided large buses as assistance for regional BRT systems in 2014-2015. However, the buses were unsuitable because the roads were small. Today, the ministry ran preliminary assessments to determine those areas unsuited to receiving buses from the central government.

Besides this, said Budi, misunderstandings regarding executive and legislative responsibilities concerning the BRT existed in the regions. The aim was to urge people to switch from private vehicles to public transportation. Without strong understanding of this aim, the BRT could not be managed well.

For example, some areas had built bus shelters without public campaigns on how to use them, and passengers often found it difficult to access them. Without hard work, it would not be possible to achieve the goal of establishing a good BRT service. (ARN/PIN/AYS/HLN/IRE/VIO/DIT/KRN/NCA