Alan K. Meier

Intermediate Transport in South East Asian Cities

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Transport in Jakarta - Background

Jakarta, which now has over five million inhabitants, was founded in the early seventeenth century by the Dutch East India Company. Batavia, the Dutch name for the city, quickly became the commercial and political capital of the archipelago. In the beginning, the town lay inside a fortress, but after a series of malaria epidemics, the Dutch moved the capital outside the original city walls. Most of the European-style development followed the principal arteries (Ref. 1), and between the major roads the Indonesians settled in the traditional kampong style (kampong is poorly translated as 'village'). The kampong consists of a compact and often densely populated community. Those around Senen, an important market area, have densities of up to 50,000 people /sq. km., and their size varies from a few hundred metres on each side to perhaps a kilometre. The kampong is the structural unit of Indonesian society, and each has a political and a religious leader. The kampong is rarely penetrable by motor vehicles on more than a few routes, most of the activity being on small paths about one metre wide. Recently, new city plans have called for the eradication of the inner-city kampongs, but the impact, or even the extent of the clearance, is not known. The last few years have seen changes in the central kampongs, for many of the wider streets penetrating them have been paved and, at the same time, the bordering gutters have been covered. These two actions have allowed larger vehicles to enter.

Automobiles are still a possession of the upper class. Several models are assembled locally, including Toyota, Volkswagen and Mercedes. Duties are set very high to make locally assembled vehicles competitive with imports. Buses are also assembled locally, and account for 8,000 of the 400,000 motor vehicles registered in Jakarta (Ref. 2). In 1974 the number of buses was increasing by 1% a month. Many people walk in Jakarta, either because they live too far from the bus routes or they simply cannot afford the fare.

Jakarta is the political and commercial capital of Indonesia, and because it is the showplace of Indonesia many observations pertaining to it do not apply to the other large Indonesian cities. But often what is presently occuring in Jakarta will soon be seen in the other Indonesian cities. Change is taking place so rapidly that the transport mix described here might only be found in the other cities by a later visitor.

Due to the structure of Jakarta, with large arterial highways bounding barely penetrable kampongs, the transport systems show a similar division. Unique forms of transport have evolved for the very short, intra-kampong movements, while an entirely different set of vehicles are used on the major routes.