Sutiyoso's "Brilliance"

You, the reader, would most probably view me as someone of most ardent cynicism and hatred. You’re probably right. Disappointingly, I remain in this state of abhorrent lunacy – more so after the recent reduction of roads in West Jakarta and the resultant gridlock of this dung-hole.

A quick google search of Sutiyoso – governor of this great labyrinthine maze of urban garbage we call Jakarta – reveals admirably positive publicity. The man is blindly regarded by the press as a great pioneer for Jakarta’s infrastructure.

The busway, they say, is our city’s “brilliant” answer to public transportation. True, the provision public transportation has been improved over these past seven years. But something meant to ease the congestion here has, in fact, done the exact opposite.
Sutiyoso’s brainchild has taken up about one of three lanes of virtually every major thoroughfare of Jakarta. Roads, already underprovided, are taken up to give room for a bus lane that is barely functional. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the fastest growing market in the world for motorcycles, and what is left of Jakarta’s roads are infested by these ridiculously reckless two-wheelers. Tragedy befalls us - the growth of the market for cars here is no less substantial.

It would help if the busway was, at the very least functional. At peak hours, one must queue for fifteen minutes before being able to enter the overcrowded busses of claustrophobic suffocation. So while commuting on the busway itself is fast, the queue counterbalances this. While these underprovided busses can only carry about forty people at a time, the bus lane is virtually empty with no only one or two busses in sign, with the remaining lanes in gridlock. Even at full capacity, the amount of people traveling per hour in the busway is considerably lesser than a lane’s potential capacity if cars were allowed to make use of it.

Sutiyoso plans to expand his busway network by adding about seven more lines. Meanwhile, it’s taking us ten years to finish only a twelve kilometer part of the Jakarta outer ring road. Jakarta further decays to excrement each year and they call it progress.

Yes, the poor are somewhat advantaged by this testament of blind idiocy, but at what expense? Our commute times are doubled; we waste petrol on road-queuing while the fuel market climbs upwards as Indonesia faces double digit inflation.

True that the busway is much cheaper than say, a subway, or some other actually effective mean of public transport. But why resort to a cheap failure? Wouldn’t the finances be put to better use if an effective subway line – one that actually reduces congestion – was built, as opposed to five busway lines which only makes things worse?

Even more ridiculous is the corruption that obviously reeks in these “one billion rupiah busses.” Reading the promotion of these “advanced busses” costing over “one billion rupiah” in our newspapers numbs me with constipation.

What will our metropolis be reduced to when Sutioyoso’s dreams are realized? Ineptitude and immorality plagues our bureaucracy, that “progress” is negative that despite Indonesia’s rapid economic growth, unemployment and poverty figures are higher than ever.

I hope that the people whom we entrust our tax money in will someday, God knows how, actually be capable of advancing this rancid nation. But I’ve come to realize that it has been ten years since the 1997 monetary crises and still we remain lamentably pathetic. Prospect is faint; who do we turn to?