Dofa Fasila & Zaky Pawas – Commuters in Greater Jakarta are abandoning public transportation in droves in favor of private vehicles, an official said on Thursday, while the city's administration said it would take steps to ease traffic on congested Jalan Casablanca.

Jakarta Traffic Police Chief Sr. Comr. Royke Lumowa said the shift threatened to exacerbate traffic congestion and render the city's widely panned bus and train services obsolete.

"Commuters are increasingly choosing to use private vehicles rather than take public transport. If this keeps up, public transportation will soon cease to exist."

He cited a study done for the Jabodetabek Urban Transportation Policy Integration Project that showed the number of public transit users dropping by a quarter from 2002 through 2010.

In 2002, 38.3 percent of commuters used public transport, but by 2010, it had dropped to 19.3 percent.

At the start of the study period, 21.2 percent of commuters used a motorcycle, while 11.6 percent used a car. By the end of that period, those percentages had jumped to 48.7 for motorcyclists and 13.5 for drivers.

These statistics, Royke said, could be seen by the sheer volume of vehicles clogging the city's streets today.

"Every year an extra 600,000 to 900,000 new vehicles are registered in the city, 80 percent of them motorcycles," he said. "By the end of 2010, there were eight million motorcycles alone in Jakarta."

The number of those traveling by foot or bicycle dropped from 23.7 percent in 2002 to 22.6 percent in 2010, despite the advent of community initiatives such as the Bike to Work movement and monthly car-free days on certain thoroughfares.

Royke blamed the exodus from public transport, which happened despite the introduction of the busway, on the declining standard of buses and trains.

"The high incidence of crime and discomfort inherent in public transportation, coupled with the worsening congestion, is what's making people turn to private transportation," he said.

To resolve this situation he called on the Jakarta Transportation Office to take measures to improve the quality of their services, including scrapping aging buses. He said, however, that the office had not considered any of the police's recommendations on the matter.

"They're scared of scrapping the older buses because of opposition from the owners," Royke said. He also called for other modes of public transport to be introduced, such as a monorail, and for the three-in-one policy, under which only high-occupancy vehicles can enter certain streets during rush hours, be scrapped because it was ineffective.

"People who are fed up of taking public transport would rather drive and hire a three-in-one 'jockeys' to play the system," he said.

Among the problems afflicting Jakarta's public transport system is the generally poor condition of shelters along the busway lines that crisscross the city.

In particularly bad shape are the shelters along Corridor III, which runs from Harmoni in Central Jakarta to Kalideres in West Jakarta, several of which are missing their roofs. Some of them have been taken over by street-side vendors, tire repairmen and homeless people.

On Thursday, the West Jakarta administration said it would fix these shelters, many of which have been without a roof for the past three years.

Saleh Tahir, the administration's head of transportation, said he was aware of the damage to the shelters but denied his office had failed to act on the problem quickly enough.

"We routinely maintain these shelters," he said. "The roofs were torn off by strong winds and not because the screws holding them were loose."

He also said his office was studying the possible relocation of a series of five shelters along Corridor III, none of which is located near a side street.

"Once the study is done, we hope to move those shelters to more strategic locations. We want them at points where they'll be able to serve the needs of the most people possible. We won't leave them to languish in their current locations," Saleh said.

In a separate development, the Jakarta administration announced measures to ease traffic jams along Casablanca in Kuningan, South Jakarta, where construction is underway on an elevated road linking Kampung Melayu in East Jakarta to Tanah Abang in Central Jakarta.

The administration previously suggested alternative routes that motorists could use instead of Casablanca, including Jalan Gatot Subroto, Jalan Karet Pedurenan, Jalan Bendungan Hilir, Jalan Dukuh Atas, Jalan Rasuna Said and Jalan Saharjo.

On Thursday, it announced it would also open Jalan Denpasar in the Mega Kuningan business district to the public. Access to the district, which hosts the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that were targets of terrorism, is normally restricted for security reasons.

Governor Fauzi Bowo denied that the congestion along Casablanca was caused by the construction, instead blaming motorists for wanting to take the road.

"Of course the construction contributes a bit to the traffic, but should that stop us from building it? Then we'll have no recourse when the number of vehicles increases and there's gridlock."