<span class="" id="parent-fieldname-description"> Jakarta has officially begun its long-awaited passenger rail development. Jakartaâs governor, Joko âJokowiâ Widodo, broke ground at the opening of the Mass Rapid Transit project in the massive Indonesian city on October 10. </span> <p>“After 24 years of daydreaming of having an MRT, finally Jakarta residents’ dream will come true,” Jokowi said.<br /><br />The MRT is the first stage of Jakarta’s planned massive passenger rail construction, which will see the installation of north/south and an east/west corridors, to help reduce congestion in the city, which houses roughly 9m people.<br /><br />Ken Devencorn, Aurecon’s technical director for resources & manufacturing services and an expert on rail in Indonesia, told Rail Express that this first stage might seem underwhelming, but would play a massive part in securing a better transport network in the city.<br /><br />“The Jakarta MRT is going to be the first stage of a much larger development,” he said. “By itself, it probably doesn’t deliver much more than a few thousand journeys along the first 13 or 14km of travel.<br /><br />“But it’s really important to have this as a backbone and foundation development for ongoing development of public transport in the city.”<br /><br />He said that, in itself, the first stage is probably going to have a minimal impact, but added that, “it’s going to be really important to build up a foundation for future growth.<br /><br />“It’s part of the strategy to deliver an integrated transport solution to Jakarta,” Devencorn continued.<br /><br />“It needs to be integrated – it can’t be seen to be just one more form of public transport. To make it effective, efficient and competitive, you can’t just have the MRT running alongside the buses, roads and motorbikes. You need to provide linkages where the buses feed into feeder stations, which provide the links through the MRT stations.”<br /><br />Devencorn believes there will be an impressive initial spike in usage when the MRT opens, and that this will be positive for future development.<br /><br />“Typically when you launch new infrastructure &hellip you get an initial novelty factor – there will be a burst of people who give it a go,” he explained.<br /><br />“It will be a significant spike as people jump on and have a bit of a look to see what it’s like &hellip and then it sort of stabilises at a point where regular users start using it [after that].<br /><br />“If the media hype can be kept positive, and if [Widodo] can keep the media positive, there’ll be a huge spike as people come on board &hellip that initial spike will then drive the next stage of development.<br /><br />“The old saying is that if you build it they will come. There’s been lots of projects where projects have been built and no-one’s come. I think this particular project, if you build it, they will come,” Devencorn concluded.<br /><br />Once completed, the Jakarta commuter rail project will stretch approximately 110.3km.<br /><br />Aurecon is currently supporting the ‘Indii iniative’ – an infrastructure support program headed up by the Federal Government’s Austrade and the Indonesian Government. Aurecon has so far provided advice for the development of Indonesia’s regulatory regime and hopes to continue this in the future.</p>
