Dofa Fasila, Zaky Pawas & Ulma Haryanto, Jakarta – Jakarta's city councilors are considering revising a traffic bylaw to restrict the use of private vehicles on certain days depending on whether the vehicle's license plates end in odd or even numbers.
"A team of transportation experts and councilors are evaluating the worth of this odd-even scheme and whether it would actually help curb traffic in Jakarta," Triwisaksana, deputy speaker of the City Council, said on Tuesday.
"If so, the restriction will be included as a revision to the 2003 bylaw on traffic." "There is a good possibility that the revised bill will be passed in 2011. We hope to include the odd-and-even system as one of the articles," Triwisaksana said.
He also said that the revised bylaw is planned to be more in line with the recently-ratified 2009 Traffic and Road Vehicles Law. If the article is included in the revised bill, private vehicles in the city will be restricted based upon the last digits of the vehicle's license place. Similar regulations have already been applied in Bogota, Manila and Beijing
With about 1.5 million vehicles in Jakarta squeezed onto roads that can only handle about a million, according to 2009 estimates by traffic experts, the result is a traffic nightmare consisting mostly of private vehicles – public transportation makes up only about 8 percent of all vehicles in the city.
Tri Tjahjono of the Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) in Jakarta doesn't think the plan is feasible.
"You know what Indonesians would do? They would make fake license plates with different numbers so that they can drive their cars everyday. People's mobility cannot be restricted," he said.
"If people are not allowed to use their cars, then the question is, can our public transport system accommodate the 50 percent of commuters who cannot use their cars on that day?"
Fransiscus Alip, 35, a consultant that works on Jalan Sudirman, said the regulation would effectively discriminate against lower-class families who only have one car, while those that own two or more cars would be mostly unaffected.
"The question is, have [policy makers] calculated the number of families that would be affected? Office workers would probably resort to taxis. And if so, how can they make sure that taxi companies will not just increase their fleets to accommodate the increasing demand? Will the roads become full of taxis?" he asked.
Firdila Sari, 25, a bank employee who also works on Sudirman, called the odd-even scheme "super silly". "You can't restrict people from using their cars without providing a proper substitute, such as comfortable public transport," she said.
Sr. Comr. Royke Lumua, director of the Jakarta Police Traffic Directorate, said he endorsed the odd-even scheme, saying it would be more effective and easier to implement than the proposed Electronic Road Pricing system, as well as the 3-in-1 system. "ERP might be effective, but it requires more intensive socialization. We also have to produce ERP censors for each car," he said.
The ERP system is expected to help ease congestion in the capital by levying a fee on drivers each time they enter certain streets during peak hours.
The 3-in-1 system, which requires cars to be occupied by at least three occupants while driving on certain streets during rush hour, has been deemed by many as ineffective due to the proliferation of passengers for hire, known as jockeys
"For the license plate restriction to work, we are going to need more officers on the road. It's a matter of intensive and continual monitoring, looking at cars' license plate numbers one by one. Meanwhile there are a lot of cars on Jakarta's roads. So it's a bit impossible to do with our current numbers," Royke said.
He added that chronic traffic congestion in the city was also caused by public buildings with access to main roads. In the future, new buildings will have to pay attention to the traffic impact analysis, he said. "Their entrance or exit should not disturb traffic passing the building."