With Jakarta more macet than ever with the erasure of the 3-in-1 policy, keeping the busway lanes clear of private vehicles so that TransJakarta buses can travel them quickly has never been more important. On Monday, fines on motorcyclists caught in the busway were doubled to Rp 500,000 and police launched a new crackdown to keep the busway “sterilised” of selfish drivers.
Some media met this latest busway crackdown with skepticism, noting that certain areas were still rife with private vehicles infiltrating the special lane. But the police say they have been taking the task very seriously and have reported that they have ticketed over 1,000 drivers for breaking into the busway over the last three days.
“The first day we ticketed 274 offenders, on the second 408 and on the third day 392. That’s a total of 1,074 offenders,” Budiyanto, the Jakarta Traffic Police’s head of development and law enforcement, told BeritaSatu today.
Budiyanto said the vast majority of those ticketed were motorcyclists, with drivers of the two-wheeled vehicles racking up 1,025 of the 1,074 tickets handed out, with cars (28) public transport vehicles (16) and cargo trucks (3) rounding out the rest.
Budiyanto said that the traffic police had ticketed 27,543 offenders this year to date.
Considering that is less than half the number of tickets police gave traffic offenders in 2015 (65,518) the police had better learn to write them a lot faster if they hope to instill any discipline in the capitol’s chaotic drivers.
As for the busway, hopefully the police will not simply crackdown for a few days and forget about it again later – without sustained, consistent penalization, Jakarta’s drivers will soon be passing through the public transport lane once again.
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