The minister made the statement after attending a meeting with governors and senior officials from all provinces in the country to discuss the problem of traffic jams in Indonesia and the implementation of infrastructure projects such as airports, railways and sea ports in some parts of the country.
"In the near future, Jakarta city will have its 3-in-1 system replaced by an Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system in an effort to reduce traffic jams in the city. We will also keep developing the TransBandung bus system and reactivate railways in south Bandung to tackle problem of traffic jams," said the minister.
Asked about the budget that the government will spend to build the infrastructure to tackle traffic jams in the six cities, Hatta said he could not yet give the details.
Earlier, the Jakarta Police`s Traffic Directorate had predicted the capital city will be packed with 12 million motor vehicles by year 2011 , something that would only worsen the capital city`s traffic jam problem.
"The number of vehicles in Jakarta city tends to increase every year. We predict there will be 12,062,396 vehicles - motorcycles and cars - in Jakarta city by 2011," Indra Jafar, coordinator of Jakarta`s Traffic Management Center, said.
He said the number would not include 859,692 public transport vehicles operating across the capital.
Indra expressed concern that the rising number of vehicles would worsen the traffic jam phenomenon in Jakarta since the growing number of vehicles was not followed by new road construction.
To tackle this problem, Indra suggested that the Jakarta city administration optimize development of mass transportation.
(Uu.A051/HAJM/O001)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
