Vehicular Travel Restrictions Into Jakarta

The newly elected Governor of Jakarta, Ir. Joko Widodo (a/k/a "Jokowi"), has enacted a new government regulation that will go into effect March 2013.

Effective in March of the New Year:

• vehicles with even number license plates will only be allowed into Jakarta on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.   

• vehicles with odd number license plates will only be allowed into Jakarta on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

• Sunday is free unrestricted travel for all vehicles.

Already, you can spot a huge injustice.  Those who were fortunate, by fate or other means, to already have been issued an odd number license plate will be allowed ingress to Jakarta 3 days of the week; while people who have been issued even number plates will only be allowed ingress 2 days of the week - assuming a traditional work week schedule of Monday through Friday.

For the rich and affluent (Indonesians or expats) who live in areas of Jakarta like Pondok Indah or Kemang, they can just buy another car or use another car that has the alternate odd/even license plate number as a way of circumventing this new regulation.  But those people live and/or work in Jakarta already.

But what about the less affluent people who live in outlying areas of Jakarta (such as Bekasi, Bogor, Cibubur, Citeureup, etc) and rely on vehicular transportation to work in Jakarta because there is no reliable, safe and clean public transportation system as we know it in the United States? 

As in most major metropolitan areas in the U.S., people work in the cities for the higher salaries and better job opportunities (but often cannot afford the higher rents or housing prices in the city) and must therefore live outside the city to find affordable housing.

Those people who live outside the city and must commute into Jakarta on a daily basis (and who are unfortunate to have been issued an even number license plate) will be affected and hurt the most, as they will only be allowed into Jakarta 2 days of the normal work week (Tuesday & Thursday).  You can see where this is leading....

This new ruling, like many I have seen in Indonesia, is counter intuitive and not clearly thought out.  This is going to be an absolute disaster if fully implemented in March 2013. Expect to see even further police corruption as a result of this; chaos, mass protests, demonstrations and ensuing violence erupting on the streets of Jakarta like Gunung Merapi as a result of this most ill-conceived plan.  

This is like putting a Band-Aid on a wound that requires a tourniquet.  The solution is to address and fix the GROSSLY inadequate infra-structure in and around Jakarta!

National Geographic (NatGeo) did a great piece called "MegaCities" which featured a segment on Jakarta and documented some of these woefully inadequate infra-structure issues.  The Jakarta "MegaCities" segment can be seen if you click here.   

For an idea what driving in and around Jakarta is like, click here.

The United States did do this odd/even license plate type of restriction in the late 1970's during the Carter administration; however, the restriction was on getting gasoline at the pumps and not on driving per se.