Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Board or alight wherever and whenever they like. In the middle of the road, or, if there's no room, at the roadside. At the entrance of the inner city toll road, on a roundabout, in a road junction when the lights are green, and so on. This freedom costs Jakarta bus users dearly in more ways than one.
On Saturday, city councillors finally approved a 30 percent increase in bus fares to be implemented as of July 3. The fares for regular buses will increase from 500 rupiah (4 US cents) to 650 rupiah, express and medium buses from rupiah 700 rupiah to 800 rupiah, and air-conditioned express bus fares will rise from 2,500 rupiah to 3,000 rupiah. This is less than the city administration wanted. Their proposal was for fare rises of almost 60 percent.
The government has promised a subsidy for bus operators, with savings from the recent cut in fuel subsidies, but Sutiyoso, the venerable Jakarta governor, thinks his city will not get this manna from heaven – he told journalists at City Hall that "imagining receipt of the subsidy is like imagining the moon falling to earth".
Sutisyo presides over a city where the industrialization of the Suharto era and ensuing substantial migration from rural areas has created growth patterns that have taken a heavy toll on the physical infrastructure as well as the quality of life. Characteristically armed with field surveys and calculations, he blamed the increases fairly and squarely on the rise in fuel prices. The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI), however, has done its homework and says the fuel rise component would only add 5 percent to total operating costs.
Jakarta public transport commuters should be thankful for the YLKI as they themselves are, collectively, non-vocal and resigned to their fate. Semi-comatose from the carbon monoxide levels or sensory overload perhaps, these poor souls face up to misery, pollution and downright danger every time they cross the city. Because of the congested traffic, buses are forced to run at a slow speeds, and any turnaround time and punctuality is out of the question. Alighting from buses requires a certain level of dexterity, as most of the time the bus is still moving.
These passengers are carried on a total of 5,441 full-sized buses and 4,981 medium-sized buses that have been operating in the capital for more than 20 years. Those who daily brave the hazards of pollution, pickpockets and muggers on the buses and at the terminals fare little better than the bus drivers themselves, who now pay an average daily bus rental fee of 360,000 rupiah and daily fuel costs of 100,000 rupiah. This gives them a take-home pay of between 15,000 rupiah and 20,000 rupiah, compared with 25,000 rupiah to 40,000 rupiah a day before the fuel price increase.
Traffic jams, overpowering pollution from vehicle exhausts and a public transport system which runs on its own haphazard timetable are the lot of the poor consumer. Metro Jakarta's population is around 9 million, though this total swells to about 12 million during the day. The Land Transportation Owners' Association (Organda) , with another city agency, the Land Transportation Agency (DLLAJ), rules over all transport issues in the metropolis.
Confusion reigned earlier as the government kicked its heels over revealing the form of the subsidy and the mechanism by which it would be channeled. It only recently announced that the subsidy will amount to 216.4 billion rupiah and be divided among owners and operators of city buses and trains, excluding the angkot, small vans, as well as for the procurement of new buses for the city-run Jakarta public bus company, PPD. This appears to badly discriminate between big buses and passengers on the angkot, who now have to pay fares that are 20-40 percent higher than before.
The subsidy will only be made available in 20 cities to the operators of 7,987 large buses and 8,747 medium-sized buses. Drivers will not benefit from the subsidy anyway, as it is paid to the operators. The consequences of the fuel price ride hit drivers hard as the cost of fuel comes out of their own pockets and not from the operators. Even if the operators reduced the daily vehicle rental fees, as has been done by one transport cooperative, Kopaja, the drivers would still feel the brunt.
The cost of spare parts has risen by between 300-400 percent since the monetary crisis began in 1997 and maintenance costs account for some 40 percent of operating costs.
The woes are exacerbated by the fact that the new fares are still far below the level needed to cover operating costs. In March, Organda proved that the cost of operating a medium-sized bus was 1,160 rupiah per passenger carried, although the fare then was only 700 rupiah. Regular buses cost 1,100 rupiah per passenger to run, in return for a fare of 500 rupiah. The dilapidated state of public transport has been a major issue for years. Little official attention has been paid, probably due to the quirk that, although of course Jakarta is the capital, it is also a "region". The physical infrastructure and services of the city appear to be considered "local", and therefore do not receive the focus accorded to national issues
Smoke and fog in the capital have earned it third position in the world rankings of most polluted cities, as apparently only Mexico City and Bangkok are worse. Ear splitting noise and dangerous and reckless driving define the misery for commuters.
The city needs a total of 7,718 new buses, 3,707 large buses and 4,011 minibuses to replace the current fleet, which is more than 20 years old. The buses belong to 14 private companies and the government strategy is to subsidize imported new buses and taxis instead of handing out cash to compensate for the fuel price rise. Minister of Industry and Trade Luhut Panjaitan has announced that new buses are to be exempted from value added tax and import duties. The government will also subsidize the interest on loans by up to 14 percent. If the minister's plan comes to fruition, the subsidy for large buses will amount to 20 million rupiah a unit, and for medium-sized buses, 15 million rupiah. Pandjaitan believes that subsidizing imported new vehicles would bring greater benefit to commuters and he is willing to lower the import tax from 40 percent to 5 or 10 percent for completely-knocked-down (CKD) vehicles to help local auto assemblers.
Unfortunately, the two big assembling companies in Magelang, Central Java, PT Tugas Anda and PT Delima Jaya, can only assemble 30 vehicles per month, while the city needs 3,000 buses within the near future. The subsidy will also cover the difference between commercial interest loan rates and the 14 percent per annum on loans that the companies will be offered to buy buses.
By lowering investment costs, operators will be more likely to update their fleets with the estimated 4,200 new buses and 13,200 new taxis, which Panjaitan expects, could start hitting the streets of the metropolis within six months. However, this is only a plan and one which is to be proposed to Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri, presumably on the assumption that by the time the deal might be settled, the good lady will be the new president. President Abdurrahman Wahid faces impeachment proceedings beginning on August 1. The soaring inflation of the past few years and the sharp fall in the value of the rupiah mean fares are still very low. For example, the fare for air-conditioned buses in 1991 was 1,000 rupiah and over 10 years later it will now be only 3,000 rupiah.
Organda has agreed to the increase in fares of the ubiquitous public transportation angkot but says bus fares should remain the same. Owners of the angkot vehicles want a fare increase of at least 20 percent. These are privately owned, but one large cooperative, the Wahana Kalpika Cooperative (KWK), runs 6,000 vans across the city. Again, the drivers bear the brunt. Most busy angkot will use up to 40 liters of fuel a day. With the 300 rupiah increase in the petrol price – from 1,150 rupiah to 1,450 rupiah – it will cost the drivers an additional 12,000 rupiah a day, just for fuel.
Although the fuel price is only 9.8 percent of the van's operational costs, the ensuing increase in the price of spare parts will severely impact on these costs.
Conversely, a large bus, according to Organda figures, which uses 120 liters of diesel a day, will be subsidized by 300 rupiah for each liter or 36,000 rupiah a day. A medium bus, using say 80 liters of diesel daily, would get compensation of 24,000 rupiah a day, State bus company Perum PPD, beset by financial problems because of its oversized workforce and the vast number of aging vehicles it runs, pays 5,600 employees from government subsidies that stem from the large losses the company incurs. Operating costs are 3.5 billion rupiah a month, of which at least 1 billion rupiah goes on fuel for a fleet of 454 buses.
The city administration wants to buy 2,000 Perkasa buses made by Texmaco, the integrated textile and engineering conglomerate. However, Texmaco itself sought some $60 million from the state owned Bank Mandiri last year to finance the procurement of materials and components for the buses, but was turned down, as it still owes around 19 trillion rupiah to the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency. The city had also planned to import buses from China with prices ranging from 160 million rupiah to 250 million rupiah each, excluding the 60 percent import tax. However, banks refused to provide credit as they saw that companies would not be able to service the loans because of the previous low bus fares.
Sutiyoso, where public transport issues are at stake, can throw up as much of a smoke screen as the aged, battered buses themselves. He caused confusion, chaos and anger last year when in November he signed off a controversial decree which allowed taxi companies to raise the flag fall from 2,000 rupiah to 3,000 rupiah, and increase the charge from 900 rupiah per kilometer to 1,300 rupiah per kilometer. Jakarta's taxi operators were free to decide whether or not they wished to increase their fares and at least seven of the city's 32 taxi companies are still charging the old fare. This has resulted in Jakarta having a two-tiered tariff for the 16,000 registered cabs available for hire. The remaining 6,000 failed the transport vehicle road test.