The Causes of Jakarta Traffic Jam in Jakarta

Traffic jam has become a big and serious problem in Indonesian capital city, Jakarta. It is a very sad truth that the commuters in Jakarta should spend their valuable time on the highway every single day. The traffic can be repeat around twice or more each day, which makes the commuters spent hours to do their trip, even for short distance trip. Having Poor public transportation and not much improvement of infrastructure had become two main causes of traffic in Jakarta.

A poor public transportation system had been the first cause of traffic in Jakarta. It was started in years 1960s, when president in that period, Soekarno ordered to remove the commuter train into buses. At that time Soekarno did not really pay attention to the amount of the buses that operate every day (fixing Indonesia’s Public Transportation Woes,2013). Accordingly, the residents were likely to use their private transportation, rather than faced crowd in the buses.

Furthermore, not much improvement of infrastructure could be another cause of bad traffic congestion in Jakarta. The improvement of the infrastructure, especially roads and skyways was not done well from 1945 until today (how to solve Jakarta, perennila traffic jams?, 2012). In year 2002, the development of roads in Jakarta less than 30 percent. However the number of private transportation keeps increasing continuously, until 80 percent from year 2001 (Current Transportation Issues in Jakarta and Its Impact on Environment, 2005). This problem was not fixed yet until to day. As the result the highway infrastructure was not capable to handle the entire vehicle that crosses the road every day.

To conclude, the traffic in Jakarta is getting worse each day because of a poor public transportation and not much improvement of infrastructure. It need a special treatment and awareness from all of the people who live in this city, neither government nor resident. The government can solve by improving the infrastructure of the road or...