More People Should Use Public Transportation

Nowadays, the population growth in Indonesia is quite high. Urbanization also

causes higher population density in big cities like in Jakarta. As population
increases, the amount of transportation needed will also increase and cause
traffic jams. This congestion also occurs due to imbalance between addition of
length and width of highways and increase in numbers of vehicles. For this problem,
we can take one solution. the solution is to start using Tranjakarta, or also known
as the ‘busway’. Transjakarta is transportation for everyone and it’s also
environmentally friendly.
Transjakarta has several advantages. First, the price is affordable. One-way
trip ticket will only costs you 3,000 rupiah. As an example, if you are going from
Pluit to Taman Anggrek, you only have to pay one trip price; whereas if you are to
go by personal car, several liters of gasoline are used and one liter of gasoline
costs 4500 rupiah; it’s simple math, people. Definitely more expensive. Moreover, if
you take a taxi, it will cost around 30,000rupiah. Second is regarding the
efficiency of time. Congestion usually occurs at some places in the city. This makes
you spend more time on the road. Meanwhile, when you use the busway, you will save
more time as Transjakarta has a special lane, which means no more traffic.
Therefore, Transjakarta will be faster and you do not have to “fight for the road”
with other vehicles.
Third reason is convenience. Compared to other public transportation such as
city buses or bajaj, Transjakarta is clearly more comfortable. Transjakarta has
air-conditioning facility and comfortable seats. On angkot, on the other hand, you
have to bear with the glaring sun, the limited seat,and accompanied with the
extremely polluted air in Jakarta which make the ride almost painful. The fourth
aspect is environmental friendliness. Busway doesn’t use petroleum like other
vehicles. It uses gas, which doesn’t cause pollution.
Moreover, a recent survey showed that the numbers of private vehicle along
Sudirman-Thamrin decreases 10 % during lunch breaks. With average of 25
thousand vehicles used during lunch breaks, 10 % reduce means 2500 less cars.
Assuming one car uses 1 litre of gasoline for going to lunch, there will be savings of
2500 litres of gasoline, or around 11 million rupiah. Imagine, during a short time
period such as lunch breaks, busway has saved 3 billion worth of gasoline. This is
not including other parts of the city like Rasuna said, and kuningan, where the
busway lane is being constructed. The decrease in gasoline usage will also decrease
the air pollution which is caused by the common vehicle, which will lead closer to a
cleaner environment and further away from global warming.
 Even so, transjakarta also has some negative aspects. First is the
insufficient amoung of busses. As there are less busses, people who are waiting
don’t know how long they’re supposed to wait and as there are a lot of people trying
to get on the bus, people are forced to be squeezed between people. This is very
convenient for thief and other immoral people. This can be seen as there are
reports regarding some thieves and sexual harassment in the corridors. These
causes busway to become less safe and comfortable. The other disadvantages is
the unstrategic location of the corridors, which causes the passenger to get into
some corridor and can cause accident.
. In conclusion, we can start to use transjakarta as an alternative
transportation. Although busway has weakness, we can see the good side of
transjakarta. That is we can save our money and time, avoid the traffic, and help to
decrease the effect of global warming.