Old Town to be car-free this Sunday

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Several streets in Central Jakarta's Old Town area will be closed to motorists Sunday from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. to reduce air pollution at the tourist destination.

The city administration has announced the Old Town area will be a car-free zone on the fourth Sunday of every month, beginning in November. The move is in accordance with a 2005 bylaw on air pollution control.

The policy will affect Jl. Pintu Besar Utara, Jl. Cengkeh and Jl. Tongkol, which are home to Fatahillah Square, the Jakarta Museum, the Puppet Museum and Red House.

Cyclists, pedestrians and public transportation will be allowed on the streets; all other motorists will be rerouted to Jl. Kali Besar Barat and Jl. Kali Besar Timur.

Jakarta Environment Management Board head Budirama Natakusuma said the ban would allow Old Town visitors to enjoy fresher air.

In addition to closing streets, the administration has organized a variety of programs and performances to draw visitors.

"We will collaborate with the Old Town Society to facilitate a mass aerobic exercise, a bazaar of traditional cuisine and traditional attractions such as the Chinese lion dance and performances of the West Java stringed musical instrument kecapi in the courtyard of Fatahillah Museum," he said.

Old Town Society consists of residents and shop owners in the area, which is known for its historic buildings, which date back as far as the 17th century.

The city administration first introduced car-free days in September, when it closed Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Thamrin from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. to private vehicles and taxis.

However, the event failed to achieve its goal of reducing air pollution, as motorists simply jammed alternative streets rather than leaving their vehicles at home.

Poor coordination between police and the Jakarta Transportation Agency left motorists confused, resulting in many cars being allowed to enter the supposedly closed-off streets.

Budirama blamed motorists' ignorance for the failure.

"We have to work hard to raise people's awareness of the importance of reducing air pollution."

Between 2001 and 2005, Jakarta experienced an average of fewer than 11 clean air days a year. In 2006, there were 45 clean air days, while there have been 54 so far this year

The administration said vehicle emissions accounted for 70 percent of air pollution in the capital.

A 2005 bylaw stipulates that each of Jakarta's five municipalities must organize one car-free day at the end of each month.

The city administration earlier said it planned to fully enforce the bylaw by November, but to date only Central Jakarta has organized a car-free day. (lln)

Govt tells housing complexes to unblock roads

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The city administration's plan to open all gates in housing complexes has drawn particular opposition from residents in Pondok Indah in South Jakarta.

Governor Fauzi Bowo has said gates in housing complexes block public access to main roads and worsen traffic, and thus need to be opened, if not dismantled.

He said the administration was studying which gates must be immediately opened, adding the manner of execution would be up to the respective municipalities.

Pondok Indah residents are brainstorming ideas of how to open a number of gates while still keeping them closed at certain times for security reasons.

Louis Pakaila, a spokesman for Pondok Indah residents, asked Friday the administration table plans until a residents' meeting could take place.

"Representatives from five community heads in Pondok Indah will have a meeting tomorrow evening," he said.

The meeting, he said, would determine which gates would be opened and the period of time they would stay open.

However, Louis said, the meeting would only consider gates that grant public access to main roads.

Louis said Pondok Indah community leaders earlier ordered a number of gates, particularly those near main streets, to be closed from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m.

Deputy Governor Prijanto said residents who set up gates "have breached both the 2007 law on spatial planning and the 2007 law on public order".

"The spatial planning law guarantees public access to all streets," he said.

He said no individual or institution could install a gate without permission from the governor.

Pondok Indah residents closed the gates during peak hours in September when construction began on a new busway corridor.

The corridor, which passes through Jl. Metro Pondok Indah, will eventually link Lebak Bulus in South Jakarta to Harmoni in Central Jakarta.

Motorists began taking alternative roads to avoid massive traffic jams on Jl. Metro Pondok Indah caused by the construction.

In a community forum website one commuter said closed gates had been a cause of traffic jams in the area.

Residents said they sought to head off possible crime by closing the gates.

"Residents can count on the nearest police station if they fear that opening gates means giving rise to crime," said Prijanto.

The administration is also considering dismantling traffic bumps that were built without permission in some housing complexes.

Travellers leave island en masse after break

Ary Hermawan, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Cesilia, 25, flew into Bali on a one-way ticket for a relaxing vacation over the long Idul Fitri holiday. She assumed it wouldn't be too difficult to get a ticket back to Jakarta so she could be back at work Monday. She was wrong.

After some serious scrambling and numerous phone calls, Cesilia was finally able to book a seat on a Lion Air flight on Saturday for Rp 1,149,000, or almost three times as much as she paid to fly to Bali with the same airline.

Still, she was glad for the ticket. Cesilia, who works as a journalist for a daily newspaper, had already been told by several airlines that there were no seats available on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, the last three days of the Idul Fitri holiday.

"I have had my holiday, which was quite long, so I have no excuse whatsoever to prolong it. I have no choice," she said.

With the end of the national holiday, probably the longest "joint-leave" in the country's history, people who left Bali to celebrate Idul Fitri in Java have begun to return.

And all the holidaymakers who packed Kuta Beach and filled the island's hotels are now crowding Ngurah Rai airport to fly home.

An official at the airport's Idul Fitri post, I Ketut Gusti Arsana, said the number of passengers leaving Bali on Friday -- the fifth day after Idul Fitri -- was 9,625 on 73 flights.

The number of arriving passengers was 6,341 on 67 flights.

"Last year, the number of departing flights on the fifth day after Idul Fitri was only 59 with 5,903 passengers," he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

He said he was pleased by the situation.

"This is a clear sign that Bali is now considered safe, while more domestic tourists now have the money to spend on a holiday in Bali," he said.

On Friday, he said, the airport served 5,438 passengers on international flights arriving on the island.

Arsana predicted Saturday would be the peak day for holidaymakers flying out of Bali.

An official at the Ubung bus station, Agus Juliantara, said Thursday was the peak day for people returning to Bali after celebrating Idul Fitri in their hometowns, mostly on Java.

"On Thursday, the number of buses entering Bali was 100 with 3,752 passengers. The figures declined to 90 buses and 3,099 passengers on Friday," he said.

Gede Putrawan, head of Gilimanuk Port in Jembrana regency, said he expected the number of people returning to and leaving Bali to peach its peak Saturday.

"Domestic tourists will check out of their hotels on Saturday afternoon and they will crowd the port on Saturday evening," he said.

"Motorcycles are already lining up at Ketapang Port, waiting for their turn to board the ferry to Bali," he said

Ketapang Port is in East Java.

Authorities have said the number of people, particularly jobseekers from Java and Lombok, entering Bali after Idul Fitri is expected to go up this year from past years.

In 2006, the busiest post-Idul Fitri day for Ubung bus station saw 99 buses carrying 3,605 passengers enter the island.

Those figures have already been surpassed this year.

Authorities have begun to take measure to prevent jobseekers from entering the province.

Security officials at Gilimanuk seaport, which links Bali to Ketapang Port in Banyuwangi, East Java, have turned away 600 people who were unable to show valid identity cards.

A sociologist from Udayana University in Denpasar, Gde Made Suarjana, said he supported administration efforts to tighten controls on arriving jobseekers, but warned the policy could be interpreted as discriminatory.

"The policy has to be seen as an effort to maintain social order as the issue of rising population has long been a problem for any city. It is not aimed at preventing the movement of people," he said.

However, he said if people saw the issue as one of ethnicity, it could aggravate social problems.

Organda, weather agency recruited for transportation safety campaign

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Transportation Ministry says it will include the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) and the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) in its land and sea transportation safety campaign.

"Our program now involves suppressing the number of transportation accidents over all modes of transportation," said Transportation Minister Jusman S. Djamal on Wednesday.

Speaking to the media after a meeting with House legislators on transportation affairs, Jusman said the ministry would collaborate with Organda in managing land transportation.

"Stricter monitoring of the implementation of transportation regulations will have to be applied. We don't want a bus to endanger the lives of people because it has no brakes or runs with slippery tires," the minister said, referring to a fatal bus accident last Saturday.

The brakes on the speeding bus carrying school children in Cianjur regency, West Java, failed before the vehicle careered off a bridge, killing 16.

"Although it hasn't been reported much in the media, there have been many efforts from (the ministry) to improve land transportation safety. In many areas, we also collaborate with the police," Jusman said.

Efforts to improve land transportation safety have included a focus on qualitative rather than quantitative credentials in selecting shuttle bus operators for routes to and from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Qualitative criteria for the upcoming airport route tender include the ability to provide good, cheap services to passengers and pass gas emission and vehicle age tests.

Jusman added that monitoring adherence to safety measures by sea transportation operators is easier than for land transportation operators as harbor captains watch over operations at sea.

"To improve sea transportation, we will collaborate with BMG for morning weather warnings. If there are huge waves of about four to six meters high, the agency will report to us in the morning," he said.

Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) chairman Bambang Susantono told The Jakarta Post that collaboration with other organizations in gathering secondary data was normal practice in foreign governments.

"Data from other sources is important to prevent accidents from occurring," he said.

Bambang said accident prevention, or "active safety measures", can be difficult to orchestrate because they often involve multiple organizations. "The first step to take is to identify possible aspects of accidents before constructing such prevention methods."

The transportation society believes that the long-term goal of active safety should be balanced with short-term passive safety goals. The challenge, according to MTI, is in coordination and organizational management itself.

Investigators identify last 5 victims of jetliner fire

YOGYAKARTA (Agencies): Forensic experts identified the last five victims of a jetliner that burst into flames as it crash-landed near Yogyakarta city, as investigators pulled charred luggage from the plane's burned-out shell Saturday.

All five were identified as Australians. Their bodies were badly burned, requiring forensic experts to work late into the night to complete the identification.

"Thank God it's over," said Slamet Poernomo, leader of the forensic experts.

A doctor, who was involved in the forensic team, told MetroTV television Friday that from all bodies had been able to be identified Friday, but members of Australian disaster response team wanted to carry out more careful identification.

The crash killed 21 people, while 119 others were able to escape through the exits of the burning Garuda Airlines plane. It overshot a runway in Yogyakarta and skidded into a rice field before exploding into a fireball.

It was the fourth accident involving a commercial jetliner in Indonesia since 2005. Experts say poor maintenance, rule-bending and a shortage of properly trained pilots may contribute to the sprawling country's poor aviation safety record.

Indonesia should be "ashamed," Vice President Yusuf Kalla said Friday, vowing to replace several top Transport Ministry officials. "We will issue stronger regulations and older aircraft will be banned," he said.

The bodies of the Australian victims - three men and two women - will be sent home for burial as soon as death certificates are issued, said Graeme Swift, head of Australia's disaster response team.

Meanwhile, field investigators continued to search through the wreckage, collecting blackened suitcases and burned boxes.

The remaining shell of the Boeing 737-400 was expected to be moved to an airport hangar for further analysis.

"We have to work quickly but carefully," said Joseph Tumenggung, a field investigator.

The cause of Wednesday's crash is still being investigated, and data from the plane's black boxes will be analyzed in Australia.

The pilot said he felt "a very powerful downdraft just before landing," said Capt. Stephanus Geraldus, president of Garuda's pilots' association, referring to a phenomena typically caused by differences in air temperature or pressure.

Sutiyoso's transportation policies queried

Adisti Sukma Sawitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Do you like living in Jakarta? If the answer is no, you are probably one of the thousands of Jakartans who are largely dependent on public transportation or ill at ease when faced by the poverty in our midst.

A survey conducted by the Youth and Student Network for Democracy (JPMD) suggested the performance of the Sutiyoso administration has been far from satisfactory in all sectors, resulting in the poor quality of life in the capital.

The majority of the 1,000 respondents said his record in tacking poverty and social exclusion, improving the public transportation and combating corruption in the last five years of his tenure had been poor.

Central Statistics Agency data for 2005 showed the number of people categorized as poor had doubled within a year to 675,700, or 7 percent of the city's population.

Urban planner Marco Sastrawijaya said the weaknesses in Sutiyoso's policies were the result of the current bureaucratic system.

He cited inconsistencies in Sutiyoso's transportation policies such as replacing the slow lanes of Jl. Sudirman and Jl.Thamrin in December with fast lanes, despite the administration's commitment to reducing air pollution in the city.

The administration earlier this month placed road separators on the same main thoroughfares to demarcate slow lanes for motorcycles and public buses in an effort to change the behavior of road users.

"If he is really committed to reducing air pollution, he must say no to additional road expansion projects and reject proposals to build more parking facilities and gas stations," Marco said in a discussion on the survey Wednesday.

Governor hopeful from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) Adang Daradjatun said the city had to create partnerships with its neighboring cities and regencies to overcome its poverty and transportation problems.

"The city is undeniably overcrowded and needs other regions to help it accommodate its surplus population, including newcomers to the city," he said during the discussion.

The Jakarta Population and Civil Registration Agency reported recently that despite the presence of 8.7 million people in the city, only 7.5 million had registered themselves as residents.

Adang said it was also important to empower small and medium enterprises as this was the key to strengthening the city's economic structure.

RI should review all policies on transportation: ITF

JAKARTA (Antara) : The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) expressed concern about a recent series of deadly transportation accidents in Indonesia such as the sink of Senopati Nusantara passenger ship, the missing of Adam Air jetliner and the derailment of Bengawan train.

Indonesian transport authority should take initiative to encourage the government to review all policies on transportation to avoid lethal accidents from recurring, ITF Asia Pacific regional secretary Shigeru Wadha said in a letter conveyed to Indonesia-chapter ITF.

Wadha was quoted as saying that London-based ITF secretary general David Cockroft had been deeply concerned about the series of deadly transportation tragedies in Indonesia.

The Tokyo-based ITF Asia Pacific secretary attributed the Indonesian transportation tragedies to past transportation industrial sector which did not prioritize security and safety aspects.

The current transportation means in Indonesia both made in Indonesia and overseas were already old, Wadha was quoted as saying.