JAKARTA , THE CITY THAT I LIVE IN

Sustainable development is a pattern of resources usage that aims to meet human needs while preserving the natural environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also in the indefinite future. In simple way, we can say that sustainable development is the way to develop something without leaving the needs to the future development. Nowadays, sustainable development is being a very hot topic around the world. City development is essential, but we should not forget about the continuity of the development that will occur in the future. There are lot of fields that must be developed in Jakarta in the near future, but the most important field that will lead to another greater development is transportation sector. How can this be the most important thing? Why transportation sector is an urgent thing to be developed in Jakarta?

Three pictures above are the condition that we as the citizen of Jakarta (the capital city of Indonesia) must face every day. This condition doesn’t only occur on a main road, but also on the highway (as you can see at the 3rd picture) which supposed to be free from traffic jam. Jakarta which currently is one of the most populous cities in the world is strained by transportation problem. BBC News informed that only 2% of Jakarta citizen use public transport while the other use private car. Car users are growing at a rate of 10% a year, so unless something is done, analyst said that the city will become completely gridlocked in a few years. We can’t blame the citizen for choosing to use their own car instead of using the public transport, sometimes they’re forced to that option because Jakarta still hasn’t had an adequate transportation system. How can we develop something if a half of our time must be spent on the road? How can we become more productive if we already tired soon after we arrived at our work place? How can we support the government environment program, if the emission produced from this problem made Jakarta becomes the top ten cities for the worst air quality?

We have to look from the other populous cities such as Japan, Seoul, Bombay, and Bangkok. They already had a good transportation system. Bangkok is the closest example that we can take since the condition was just almost the same with Jakarta. Bangkok used to have a very serious problem in their transportation area too, but now they already had a mass transportation system that reduce the traffic rate there. If we want to reduce the waste of time, the waste of productivity, the waste of energy (fuel, which is the nonrenewable energy and hit a high price now), the waste of government financial budget (since fuel is the thing that is being subsidized by the government), and want to succeed the government environment program, Jakarta must develop a better mass transportation system.

We can conclude that the Jakarta mass transportation system is urgently needed to be implemented in a very short period. Jakarta already had TransJakarta (bus rapid transit system), KRL (train system that connect Jakarta to its neighboring city), and monorail (that is planned to serve the business district of the city). It’s a start to a better transportation system. The important thing now is how to connect all these transportation modes into one integrated system so that people can travel all over Jakarta easier, with more comfort and of course, faster. If this system successfully run, it will definitely reduce the amount of air pollution that will bring Jakarta to become a better place to live. It also will reduce the usage of fuel so that it will reduce the government financial budget and in the end the amount of saving from fuel subsidy sector can be transferred to the other sectors such as education and health service which are also important fields in a city development.