A word or two about the traffic

Early on Saturday mornings it is usually easy to get from point A to point B in Jakarta. The rest of the time the traffic varies from traffic to heavy traffic to very heavy traffic and on to the Indonesian word for traffic, macet. Macet really means jammed up traffic. I would call it traffic that is basically at a dead stop.

On Wednesday B had to go to the site where they will build the plant. I believe he told me he left there around 3:30. The first text from B came at 5:49 with a comment that indicated to me they were still very far away and a reminder that The Voice would start at 7:05. [They are showing this here express from the US which means within 12-24 hrs so we are able to follow the show.] Most of his texts were various forms of this: "traffic is stopped again." The trip can take 2-3 hours or it can take much, much more. Yesterday it took about 5 hours. That did include an hour or so very near the apartment where traffic was also at a standstill.

He took these photos during his time in macet. Sorry, the second photo is fairly blurry but you get the idea.

I did check a very helpful app here called WAZE and learned that the cause of this mess was not accidents so it had to be something else. It had rained, so was that the reason? This morning's edition of the paper shed some light on a possible cause. Yesterday was the first day of a program to ticket traffic violators on Jakarta's roadways. One big issue is that motorists, specifically motorcycles (scooters), move into the opposite direction lanes when traffic is heavy so they can keep moving. Also, public transport vehicles like buses apparently stop to pick up/drop off passengers at other than designated spots so this causes traffic problems as well. So, a program will run from yesterday through Dec.9. There will be 2700 police tasked with ticketing roadway lawbreakers. Our maid Tin mentioned that she saw a lot of police and police vehicles on her way home last night so my guess is that this traffic program was the reason for the traffic mess or macet. All of those stopped vehicles while their owners had a chat with the police. What were the numbers? 790 motorcyclists were ticketed for driving against traffic and 411 public transport vehicles were ticketed for the infraction described above.

But that might not be the only cause. Jakarta has around 7200 kilometers (4474 miles) of roads at present. The ideal amount of roadway based on the number of vehicles should be 12000 kilometers (7456 miles) of roadway so Jakarta has only 60% of what it needs. There are 26.4 million motorcycles in Jakarta. I read somewhere that we add about 1000 cars a day to the Jakarta's roadways. The government is focusing on these issues.