JAKARTA: He calls it a “kost for jailbirds” - the six-square-metre shoebox unit in central Jakarta that Mr Appe Novian Caniago has been renting at 500,000 Indonesian rupiah a month for the past three years.
Nicknamed the “Big Durian” after the pungent, spiky fruit that deeply divides fans and detractors, Jakarta has a population of about 10 million, translating to approximately 15,000 residents per sq km. In comparison, Singapore's population density is about 8,000 residents per sq km. They felt that Jakarta will continue to play an important role, along with its many troubles, and complement the new capital - like New York to Washington DC, Brasilia to Sao Paulo, or Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya.
A more direct way would be a bus that goes straight to Bekasi, but more often than not, commuters have to stand in a packed bus for two hours - not something that Ms Mashita is keen on doing after a long day at school. Jakartans spend 400 hours a year on average stuck in traffic, a 2015 survey commissioned by the Institute of Transportation and Development Policy had found. Commuters are not the only ones grappling with traffic woes; drivers do not have it easy either.
It was frustrating for her as her destination was just 10km away, and would have taken her 30 minutes if she had used a straightforward route. Jakarta’s population density is easily twice that of other Southeast Asian cities such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. The further away from central Jakarta, the cheaper the land cost, where some bought bigger plots and cars with their payouts, he pointed out.
“The government was mainly in the business of giving and selling licences. They don’t care about fleet and operation,” said the 31-year-old former research and policy manager with the Institute for Transportation and Development, a non-governmental organisation. He recently joined TransJakarta, as head of its route management department.
While climate change has caused sea level around Jakarta to rise by 6mm a year, it is not the main contributor to the problem. Mr Indradi, 44, bemoaned that the city government has not invested in another major reservoir project after Situ Gintung, a poorly-maintained 1933 Dutch-built dam that once stood 16m high but collapsed in 2009, resulting in floods killing at least 98 people. Its reservoir used to hold at least two million cubic metres of water.
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