Crammed conditions on the KRL Commuterline on regular days can be suffocating, but today the commute between Bekasi and Jakarta Kota was reportedly a whole lot more nightmarish than usual due to delays caused by railway maintenance, leading to several passengers fainting.
As reported by Kompas, trains on the Bekasi-Jakarta Kota line are taking two to three hours to complete the entire trip today, which is around twice as long of its usual travel time.
According to station medics at Jatinegara Station, they treated 11 people who fainted as of 10:30 am today, all of whom were crammed inside the train for longer than on any other day.
"I was standing [in the train] and then it all went dark. After that I don't know what happened, I woke up and I was here," one passenger, who fainted after the train he was on was held up between Cipinang and Jatinegara stations for up to 20 minutes, said.
Station medics say that they treat two to three people for fainting on a normal day, such are the cramped conditions inside the KRL Commuterline during rush hour.
But today is no normal day. The train company last night began its scheduled maintenance to switch trains over to the newly constructed 9 km Double Double Track (DDT) from the two single tracks they had previously on the Bekasi-Jakarta Kota line.
"We apologize if there are delays in the next day or two, but the DDT will be beneficial for us in the long term," PT Kereta Commuter Indonesia Spokesperson Anne Sylvanie Purba told Okezone today.
The DDT consists of four tracks that stretch between Jatinegara and Cakung stations on the Bekasi-Jakarta Kota line. Construction of the DDT began in 2015 and it's expected to alleviate railway traffic on the line.
But passengers today are deriding KRL Commuterline management for not picking less busy days, such as the weekend, to make the switch to the DDT.