An MRT for Jakarta is completely irrational,” Penalosa said. “The land acquisition and the huge investment needed are enough to provide for more buses and the ability to transport more people through many more routes.

The quote above is from Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, who was interviewed by The Jakarta Globe while visiting Jakarta recently. I wish The Jakarta Globe would get deeper on the articles. It’s not clear to me how subway requires more land acquisition if it’s underground. Living in Singapore, it’s obvious that MRT/LRT can transport more people faster compared to busways. Additionally, you can’t create many busway lanes in Jakarta because the existing (narrow) streets are not built for it. Even if the money for MRT/LRT is converted for more buses, putting more buses on the busway lanes won’t necessarily make waiting time shorter for passengers. If the number is too many, the buses will just wait on each other (the buses can’t pass one another in the busway lane).

Penalosa also said that “the upper-classes will start using public transportation when it moves faster than cars.” Well in Jakarta, a lot of the upper-classes don’t live in areas where a busway stop is within walking distance. A lot of them would need to take other means of public transportation — inconvenient, cramped, dirty ones — before reaching the air-conditioned, safe and clean busways. I doubt the uper-classes would want to convert to public transportation before the whole network is upgraded.

I agree with Penalosa, however, that political will is crucial to handling Jakarta’s traffic problem. The current stall with the MRT project is a perfect example of lack of political will.