"Jakarta: the metro-problemo city"

         As the capital city of Indonesia, the city of Jakarta has transforms into a super metropolitan city. The incredible rises of sky scrappers and super-blocks of apartments and malls have changes its face. In line with the high progress at the infrastructure sector, the growth of the transportation mode is also amazed. When the city raises its competitive value, the citizens would mostly go in the same way. This situation leads every people to go mobile. They always travel from one place to another in short time, and always being hurry. In order to make these people are easier in traveling, they need to have their own car or motorcycles. As the recent data that has been released, each year, the statistics of personally-owned cars and motorcycles are rises every year. For the Government, as the decision- maker, which is continuously earning high contribution from taxes every year, this is good news. But on the other hand, most people do not realize that the increases of traffics and high progressive numbers of cars and motorcycles have led the public transportation into a new matter, congestion.

         In Jakarta, the traffic congestion might happen every hour. Not only at the morning and evening, but also goes every time. Even some extended roads added by the local government are still unsuccessful to reduce the problem. This matter put the situation more complicated. Congestion makes everybody snares at the roads. They will need more time to go to some place, and get their gasoline wasted for stuck in it. At the same moment, the air pollution will increase significantly. The weather could be harmful for everyone especially children.

         In order to solve the problem, the city administrators need to change its recent paradigm. They need to realize that providing a better and inexpensive transportation mode is more important than increase the number of the roads. Besides put the high infrastructure cost in its building-process, additional roads are considered as a short-term solution for this matter. One of the best solutions might be the downtown Electrical Train System. An integrated train mode is long considered at the big city such as, New York and Tokyo, as an alternative way for reducing the traffic congestion. Actually, Jakarta has already had a breakthrough transportation mode, which is known as Busway or Transjakarta. Although it is still followed by some recent problems like the limited track to cover the whole destinations in the city, but so far, it is quite good for decreasing the breakdown.

         The traffic congestion could only being solved by a radical mind. It means the local decision-maker in Jakarta need to maximize its potential to conquer the matters, even in a very limited public area. The government is also expected to arrange more brand-new transportation system, without significantly change the existed systems. More innovations by the local government would reduce the congestion gradually.