Indonesia’s long-awaited first subway opened Sunday in the country’s capital Jakarta with the aim of relieving the traffic gridlock .It often can take two or more hours to move 5 kilometres in some areas of Jakarta.
The 16-kilometre subway line includes seven elevated and six underground stations built by two consortiums of local and Japanese companies. Passengers can ride for free until the end of the month, after which operator PT MRT Jakarta has said tickets will cost the equivalent of around €1.
There is a second phase of the line: an 8-kilometre line planned for completion by 2024. The two projects are being built at a cost of $2.6 billion.
The project, funded through a loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, has been planned since the 1980s, but its construction was hampered by political crises, red tape and funding disagreements.
Jakarta’s first subway line, the latest of many infrastructure improvements across the world’s fourth most populous nation, is aimed at helping it catch up with other South-east Asian capitals such as Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok in public transport. Jakarta is officially home to about 10 million people, but the population of the greater metropolitan area swells to 30 million.
Congestion has relentlessly worsened in the past decade as car ownership rose, squeezing more and more vehicles onto Jakarta’s unchanging road network. The average peak hour speed has “significantly decreased” to 10 kilometres an hour (6.2 miles per hour), according to the transport ministry.
The line opened Sunday runs from the southern neighbourhood of Lebak Bulus to Jakarta’s down town and is expected to take less than 30 minutes.
In addition to the subway project, a $2.4 billion elevated rail network linking Jakarta and its satellite cities is also taking shape, with the first stage expected to begin operating in April.
Via AP
