Jakarta tries to get beyond 1960s “modernity”

I had been in Jakarta only once before, in 1998. I concluded then that Jakarta was just about the most pedestrian-unfriendly city on earth. Many of its roads had only the narrowest of cracked sidewalks—and carried mind-bogglingly huge amounts of traffic most of which consisted of incredibly loud and polluting two-stroke motorcycles. In several cases the narrow sidewalks were bordered by unspeakably dirty canals on one side and overcrowded roadways on the other and seemed almost absurdly dangerous.¹ Numerous streets even in the central city actually had no sidewalks at all, or else had sidewalks that had been so completely taken over by vendors that one had little choice but to walk in the roadway. Crossing streets was extremely difficult. Drivers never yielded to pedestrians, and there were hardly any traffic lights or bridges. There were naturally very few people walking anywhere, even though motor-vehicle ownership in Jakarta was not very high. Curiously, population density in the city was rather substantial, and there were numerous very tall buildings, but access to these buildings was intended to be mostly by vehicle. It was very odd that Southeast Asia’s largest urban area was so automobile-oriented, but that was just the way it was.

Jalan Sudirman, Jakarta, in September 1998. Image digitized from a slide. Note the narrow sidewalks.

I’ve since learned that much of the autocentric planning in Jakarta can be attributed to the actions of the government of Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, who ruled in the years between Indonesia’s independence after World War II and 1967.² Sukarno had actually been trained as an engineer and had worked for a year as an architect, and he brought to politics a set of strong prejudices about cities, which he was able to act on after becoming a near dictator in 1957. Sukarno’s ideas can fairly be termed Corbusien. He was absolutely obsessed with turning Jakarta into a modern-looking city, that is, one with tall buildings and wide highways. He is said to have been particularly proud of Jakarta’s Semanggi cloverleaf highway interchange (“the first in Southeast Asia”). It was Sukarno who presided over the construction of a network of mostly elevated toll highways in the Jakarta area, and who insisted on bulldozing Jalan³ Thamrin and its extension Jalan Sudirman through the center of the city, and it was he who pushed the construction of skyscrapers and what in effect was a new CBD in South Jakarta.

In Sukarno’s imagination, all of these new urban features represented progress and modernity, and their presence made Jakarta a modern city. It’s worth remembering that the period of Sukarno’s reign was the 1950s and 1960s. This was the era when superhighways were being pushed through the centers of American cities and when Brasília was being built. Pedestrian needs played virtually no role in much of the urban planning of this era, and they certainly didn’t in Jakarta, even though Jakarta, unlike U.S. cities or Brasília, was the kind of place where only a minority of the population could afford a private car.

Sukarno was effectively deposed in 1967 and replaced by a military officer, Suharto, who ruled until 1998. The Suharto government apparently concerned itself much less with urban matters, and local officials had more power. But it’s not clear that there was any great change in priorities. Jakarta kept growing, and it continued to rely almost exclusively on automobiles. The unfortunate consequences of Jakarta’s excessive reliance on motor vehicles were no secret. Air pollution levels in Jakarta were sometimes astonishingly high, and traffic jams were so frequent that it could take hours to travel a few kilometers. There was also the ever-present issue that the poor had limited mobility in a city built for cars. Plans to build a subway line were formulated at least as long ago as the early 1990s, but they were never implemented, and a financial crisis in 1997-1998 put them on hold indefinitely.

In the years after my 1998 trip, however, as in many other urban areas, there was a real change in what was felt to be desirable. The government has been taking quite a number of steps to alleviate the problems of automobile dependence.

[1] Old train lines were revived. The KRL Jabodetabek is a regional, mostly electrified rail system that dates back to the Dutch colonial era. It had so deteriorated and was felt by the government to be so antique that it was actually closed completely in the 1960s. It reopened in 1972 (long before the current revival of interest in reducing the role of the automobile in urban transportation), and the government has gradually modernized the system in the years since. It elevated some of the central-city tracks in the 1980s. It renovated stations. It acquired new (or used) Japanese rolling stock, and it insisted that passengers use electronic tickets. And it recently (2017) added a branch to the Airport.⁴ These days, trains on the major lines run every few minutes for most of the day. The KRL Jabodetabek (like its counterpart in Mumbai) resembles a rail rapid-transit system in its service frequency.⁵ It does however betray its origins as an ordinary railroad. There are grade crossings. Tracks are shared with intercity passenger and freight trains. And the system doesn’t quite go where a modern rapid-transit line would. It only skirts the edge of the CBD and spends a great deal of time in industrial areas.⁶ There are roughly 850,000 passengers a day. This is an impressive number, but perhaps not so high when you consider that the Jakarta area (Jabodetabek) has a population of something like 30,000,000.⁷

[2] A large BRT system was established. The government also built TransJakarta (sometimes spelled Transjakarta), opening the first line in 2004, and adding numerous new lines in the years since. TransJakarta is claimed to be the world’s largest bus rapid transit system. It now consists of more than 230 km of routes on thirteen separate corridors.

Jalan Sudirman in South Jakarta showing a TransJakarta stop and some of the skyscrapers that form Jakarta’s new CBD. Note the building in the distance that also appears in the 1998 photo. This photograph was taken from a spot further north.

There are also a number of feeder routes (which appear not to be counted in the statistics). On most of the corridor routes, bus lanes and stations are in the center of major roads. Passengers prepay. Stations are sheltered from the elements.

Inside a TransJakarta stop.

Transfers are free. Many of the buses use natural gas. Service on the major lines is frequent, and stations include countdown clocks. The system is quite impressive and makes getting around Jakarta by public transit enormously easier than it was in 1998. TransJakarta is generally considered a great success and its expansion has enjoyed considerable political support. But it needs to be said that there does not seem to be signal preemption, and red lights definitely slow the system down.

Jalan Thamrin showing TransJakarta buses waiting for cross traffic. At right is a ramp that provides access to a station.

An additional problem is that some of the corridors are not fully separated from the main roadway. Only the original route 1 has acquired even “silver status” from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. TransJakarta has also evidently not been very successful in luring people out of cars. There are approximately 450,000 passengers a day, which does not seem like a huge number when you consider that the Jakarta proper (to which TransJakarta is limited) has a population of more than 10,000,000.⁸ That is, many smaller BRT systems in (mostly) smaller cities (for example, those in Bogotá, Guangzhou, Mexico City, Istanbul, and Curitiba) attract far more passengers.

[3] Construction of a subway and an LRT line was begun. After several earlier attempts that ended in failure, the government has recently finally begun to build a modern rail transit system. The initial segment, from Plaza Indonesia in the CBD to the southern suburbs, is scheduled to open in 2019, and an extension north to Kota Tua and a second, east-west line are supposed to follow. The CBD portions of the line will be in subway. This “MRT” will be joined by an “LRT” line (which, despite the label, will apparently have its own right-of-way). The first part of this, in northeastern Jakarta, is supposed to open before the Asian Games in August 2018, and it too will be extended, first toward the city center, where it will meet the subway, and then in several directions at once.⁹

[4] There have been some traffic restrictions. Motorcycle traffic has been restricted on some roads at some times of day. And. of course. the TransJakarta lanes are in theory closed to ordinary traffic.

It could actually be argued that,  even if modal share remains modest, Jakarta has become a place with a fairly large amount of reasonable-quality public transit and that, within a couple of years, it will have quite a bit more (see map).

Map of Jakarta and vicinity showing the locations of the still under-construction (“U/C”) MRT and LRT as well as the Jabodetabek railroad and the TransJakarta BRT lines. Base GIS data are from the BBBike.org version of OpenStreetMap, modified somewhat.

I spent a few days in Jakarta in mid-March. I’ll gladly concede that my twenty-year-old memories may not be altogether reliable, but I had the sense that things really have changed, at least to a limited extent. Sidewalks in central Jakarta are still pretty empty, but there seemed to be a few more pedestrians than in the past, many of whom were on their way to or from TransJakarta stations. The stations come along approximately every kilometer, so walking is often needed to get to destinations. The building of BRT stations in the middle of many major streets has an additional advantage: station bridges can also be used for crossing streets. Many of the bridges even come with elevators, although I noticed that some of these are broken. Most passengers seem to avoid them. Of course, a bridge every kilometer constitutes a fairly ungenerous street-crossing provision!

The sidewalks may get a little more use than was the case twenty years ago, but there isn’t much sign that they are any safer or more pleasant to use. Sidewalks are narrow, and adjoin traffic lanes. Surfaces are often cracked or missing. Vendors sometimes block the way. Motorcyclists feel free to invade any sidewalk at any time.

Furthermore, it is still not easy to cross streets with no bridges, even at corners with traffic lights, as drivers of turning vehicles do not feel they need to stop for pedestrians. Many Jakartan pedestrians tend to slither across streets, expecting that, if they walk slowly, drivers will miss them. This does not feel very safe to me, or, it seems, to most Jakartans. The majority of those willing to cross busy highways through moving traffic appear to be young men. I did come across a couple of actual pedestrian signals in the tourist area Kota Tua, but drivers were ignoring them.

Crossing a street in Kota Tua, showing how helpful one of Jakarta’s rare walk lights is.

There are still hardly any special provisions for pedestrians. The OpenStreetMap database’s pedestrian facilities categories show very little except paths in some of the few parks. It misses paths in kampung, however.¹⁰

There are, it must be said, a few streets—side streets off the major roads, streets in Glodok, the old Chinatown, and, arguably, some of the streets in kampung—which work more or less like traditional Western big-city streets, where shops and housing offer easy pedestrian access. But even on these streets, shops and residential buildings often have parking facilities. There is not much expectation in Jakarta that anyone will walk anywhere.

None of this is a secret to people in Jakarta, and there have been some grassroots protests. A new group—the Jakarta Pedestrian Coalition (Koalisi Pejalan Kaki)—has been trying to change conditions.¹¹ This group has been quite successful at generating publicity, which is an important first step. It’s not clear, however, that it’s managed to change conditions.¹²

This jibes completely with the well-known recent study in which physical activity was measured for 111 countries.¹³ Indonesia came in last.

The disappointing ridership figures for TransJakarta are sometimes blamed on middle-class reluctance to use public transport, and it’s likely that there is much truth here. But surely the poor pedestrian environment, which makes it difficult to walk to and from the stations, is a factor as well. Public transit can’t live up to its potential if the stations are only marginally accessible.

I did come across one event that I found startling and delightful. On Sunday mornings, Jalan Thamrin and Jalan Sudirman, except for the TransJakarta lanes, are closed to traffic for several kilometers, including the stretch through Jakarta’s CBD.

“Car free day” crowds along Jalan Thamrin maneuvering through an area of subway construction.

There must have been at least a hundred thousand people enjoying this event on the Sunday I was there. Most were walking or hanging around, but there were some cyclists and runners as well. There were also food vendors, advocates of various causes, and buskers. The latter included dozens of people dressed as characters from Javan traditional tales, as well as a great many musicians, most of whom were presenting what seemed to be Indonesian pop, but I came across a group of two violinists and one guitar player who were doing pretty well by Pachelbel’s canon.

“Car free day” participants in a normally very busy traffic circle. Note the vendors and buskers to the right.

Jakarta’s street closures were of course inspired by Latin America’s ciclovías. They go back to 2002, although they have become more common and regular in recent years. The event that I attended seemed to this perhaps naïve observer like an almost perfect manifestation of one of stated goals of the original ciclovías in Bogotá: to encourage people of different social strata to enjoy public space together.¹⁴ It was an infinitely happier use of public space than Jakarta’s norm, in which public space mostly involves pedestrians working their way gingerly along noisy, irregular sidewalks and across uncrossable streets.

The most common phrase for ciclovía in Indonesian seems to be the English “car free day,” which tells you something: this event is an import. The “car free day” is an astonishing vision of a very different Jakarta. The coach turns back into a pumpkin at 11 sharp, however. This felt rather depressing to me. Perhaps it does to Jakartans as well.

It’s rather curious that in Southeast and East Asia, it’s generally the richer urban areas—Hong Kong, Singapore, and the cities of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (in something like that order)—that have become the most transit-oriented and pedestrian-friendly, and the poorer urban areas—those of Burma and Indochina, for example—that have remained most reliant on private motor-vehicle transit, even though private motor-vehicle transit is surely out of reach of many of the inhabitants of the poorer cities.  Jakarta’s efforts to become a modern city have left it much more like the latter places than most Indonesians would probably want to acknowledge. Its transit share remains low, and its pedestrian infrastructure is pretty awful. Jakarta is still one of the world’s least pedestrian-friendly cities. The rotten pedestrian environment of course sets up a feedback loop with the low transit share. Sukarno was wrong. In 2018 anyway, being modern does not seem to mean wide roads and cloverleafs and tall buildings that you can get to only in a car. It appears to mean allowing automobiles only a modest place.

Will current efforts to add better transit to Jakarta change things? It’s easy to imagine that they will help the transit dependent and the minority of middle-class people who prefer taking public transit. But has there been a case where an urban area in recent times has gone from having a low transit share to having a high one? I’m not sure there has. It’s not easy to change well-entrenched cultural habits that define transit use and urban walking as low-prestige, or to alter a society where a huge proportion of the built environment is designed exclusively for automobiles. Maybe the best that one could hope for is a bit of change around the edges, but even that is likely to happen if and only if the government keeps supporting the building of rail transit—and maybe above all if it begins to devote serious energy into disciplining automobile drivers and improving pedestrian infrastructure.