Severe Traffic Congestion in Jakarta: Why Is It? — Jakarta is known for many things but one of the most prominent things is the severe traffic congestion. When you are in Jakarta, it’s unavoidable to escape traffic that could delay your trip up to an hour or even more. While the traffic in Jakarta has improved greatly from a few decades ago, it’s still considered bad as it’s still a part of your daily life when you’re going out.
Ever got curious about what caused this severe traffic congestion? Well here, we have sorted out several reasons why the traffic congestion in Jakarta is so bad.
Overpopulation
Being the heart of Indonesia, Jakarta suffered a great overpopulation. According to the World Population Review, there are more than 11 million people residing in approximately 661.5km square area. Of course, not all of these people reside in their homes every day thus traffic is inevitable.
Ego
In Jakarta, having multiple cars in your garage can be seen as a status of wealth. The impact is that people would buy more cars to show off to their neighbours and friends that they are now successful. While this is often perceived as a bad thing, having a car can put ease your parent’s worries about you struggling economically.
Public Transportation is not that reliable
While public transportations are much more improved compared to back then, it’s still lacking. While public transportations are much cheaper compared to the price of gases, it’s still not accessible to everyone—especially if you live outside of the Jakarta area. The main idea of public transportation is that it should be accessible, comfortable, and cheap for everyone, but Jakarta’s public transportation still has a long way to go from that.
More Accessibility with Private Transports
As mentioned above, with public transportations not being as reliable as hoped, people will opt for private transport. In fact, there are much more benefits of having your own car. You can get to your destination faster using the highway, no need to walk far on the streets to get to another station or wait for the bus that often doesn’t arrive in time and get squished in the train cart.
It’s easy to get credits for vehicles
As the demand for private vehicles rises up, automotive companies make it easy for people to buy their own vehicles. To buy one, you can easily come up to the vehicle dealer, hand over some documents, pay a deposit and you’re good to go. You can choose to complete the payment right away too if you prefer it that way. Motorcycles tend to be cheap, depending on the brand and vehicle, you can buy one for around IDR 15,000,000.
Driver’s license is easily obtainable
Compared to other countries, a driving license is easily obtainable as long as you know some people and the money. You don’t have to be able to master how to drive before hitting the road, you can just practice for a few days and have someone else take the test for you thus, you’ll be able to get your driver’s license easily. With how easy people getting their driver’s license, you can expect some drivers lacking the discipline on the road, especially when there’s traffic congestion happening.
Despite the reasons listed above, we can admit that Jakarta has become more accessible with the existence of more public transportation like LRT, MRT, and TransJakarta now. A slow process is still a process, we hoped that Jakarta’s traffic congestion problem can be resolved soon. What do you think of traffic congestion in Jakarta? How do you think Jakarta can solve its traffic problems? Share this information with your social media and friends if you find it useful!
