While public transportation is still woefully inadequate in Jakarta, at the same time we must acknowledge that there are definite signs of improvement – more people are riding TransJakarta buses than ever before, there are programs to help the elderly, economically-disadvantaged and those with disabilities to use them more, and far fewer of them are spontaneously bursting into flames than they used to! (For which you can thank Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama.)
With any luck, the capital’s bus system will see a big leap in service quality this year with the addition of 2,000 buses set to be procured in 2017, which would be a massive increase over the 1,300 TransJakarta buses currently operating on our streets.
“Our procurement of buses keeps moving forward. This year we target our fleet to grow to 3,300 by December 2017, that is our progress plan,” said Budi Kaliwono, the director of PT TransJakarta at City Hall last Thursday as quoted by Berita Jakarta.
According to Budi, PT TransJakarta was given a procurement budget of Rp 750 billion for 2016-2017 and that we would start to see more new buses this year with the addition of 300 low-entry type buses set to hit the streets in March.
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