Anissa S. Febrina, Jakarta – From feet to bicycles, from trams to buses and automobiles, Jakarta has decided after nearly half a millennium to take the next baby step toward an integrated mass rapid transportation system.

City inhabitants – seeing plans for busways, monorails, subways and water taxis – are dreaming of a future of roads unplagued by run-down city buses. But what will become of the love-hate relationship between Jakartans and their angkot, Metro Mini, Kopaja and Patas buses?

The experience of 28-year old worker Gupta Dewandara is a good example this love-hate relationship at work. "I used to drive my Kijang to work in Mampang (South Jakarta) and hated the buses. But since the congestion has worsened, I'd rather take the bus, even if it means having to stand all the way from TB Simatupang to my office," he said.

But then the TransJakarta busway arrived, and it was goodbye Kopaja.

In a time when becak and bajaj still thrived in a less-sprawled Jakarta, city buses were the way of the future. But with the introduction of mass rapid transportation, the buses will have to step down from their pedestal, if they haven't already.

Around 6,500 buses have been, and will be, affected by the introduction of TransJakarta busway alone. This change has affected the livelihoods of some 13,000 workers, since one bus is often staffed by two alternating drivers.

There is of course no way of looking at the issue purely from the drivers' perspective. The city has undeniably been crying out for a proper transportation network for years. But how then can common ground be found?

"(Buses) will still serve the city as feeders. But, like it or not, some will have to be scrapped and moved to serve different feeding routes," Jakarta transportation agency head Nurachman said Tuesday. The administration has included the current bus operators in its TransBatavia consortium, a joint cooperation to manage the city's busway corridors.

If that – along with rerouting the buses and minivans as feeders – is deemed enough to solve Jakarta public transportation woes, then something has definitely been left out of the master plan.

Prior to the introduction of TransJakarta, city public transportation was a supply-driven market, with consumers without private vehicles left with no option but to hop on the notorious buses and minivans.

The existing fleet still consists of street devils by all definitions: unsafe, uncomfortable and unfriendly to the environment. But it is worth looking deeper to understand how things ended up like that.

"What do you expect when people are only paying Rp 1,000 or Rp 2,000 for the ride? Bus owners don't have the resources to maintain or revamp their old buses," Nurachman said.

Similar responses also come from bus owners, drivers and sometimes even passengers. But there is more to it than that.

"Our taukeh (boss) takes care of the buses. All we do is just tell him when our bus needs a spare part change or other services," said Ogan, a driver and timer on a Metro Mini bus serving the Cinere-Blok M route. "But, as long as we can push the bus to the limit, there is actually no problem," he said.

For Ogan, problems only come twice a year when his 8-year old bus requires its official safety and quality tests at the Pulogadung center for public transportation.

"A healthy bus could pass with Rp 400,000. But failure to meet one of the requirements costs another Rp 50,000," said Dul Ilham, a colleague of Ogan who specializes in making sure that the buses pass the tests.

An observation at the Pulogadung testing center backs up Dul's story, with drivers queuing their buses for the test familiar with the "special handshake." The result is apparent in the buses that freely roam the streets with brakes that often fail and thick smoke coming from their mufflers.

"Paying those fees is already a burden. You can't expect us to take the buses to the garage every month for maintenance," said Tobing, the owner of two Metro Minis, who competes with 35 others on the same route.

Tobing said he had to come up with Rp 40 million to start operating his buses. "For route fees and all. You know, that sort of thing," he said. And with that investment, he collects Rp 200,000 a day from his drivers.

With the special handshake available to waive maintenance problems, there are no incentives or disincentives for him to spend more on maintenance or revamp his fleet.

If Tobing is satisfied with his earnings, how about the drivers? During one trip from Cinere to Blok M alone, a driver and his assistant collect an average of Rp 120,000. A day's operation adds up to around seven trips.

Minus diesel expenses and their daily contribution to bus owners, there is still around Rp 350,000 to be divided between the two alternating drivers and two assistants.

"You have to count other expenses such as traffic tickets and route fees (to local thugs)," said Bungaran, a retired driver. He said drivers usually went home with a maximum of Rp 70,000 a day.

The chaos of the industry is in turn made more complex by the erratic and dangerous behavior of drivers and passengers. Moving informal sector drivers into the formal sector will also be another challenge.

Indonesian Transportation Society chairman Bambang Susantono explained that Jakarta also faced problems with overlapping routes and the absence of controls on the quality of services.

The Cinere-Blok M Metro Mini bus, for example, can only ride without competitors serving different routes for the first 20 minutes of its drive. After that, six different bus routes vie for business on the same streets. Competition from public minivans makes the picture even more complex.

The key to solving these complicated problems lies in more than just asking bus companies to join consortia. Bambang pointed out in his research that Jakarta should look into developing a transportation network that was affordable for all city inhabitants.

So will Jakarta see a proper, good quality transportation network soon? Let's not bet on it just yet.