Obviously many people think public transportation--angkot, as everybody call it--has been the culprit of worsening traffic jam epidemic in Jakarta. Angkot, tandem with two wheelers driver, often stop at any place and any time they want regardless other vehicles existence near them.
Today angkot took longer time to wait for passengers appearance which made the traffic stack not only in intersection road but also in many place. They prefer to wait rather than just run their car and hope find one on their route. They also don't mind take any passengers including school boy though they pay lower charge. The condition is different compare to couple years ago when they still filtered any passengers to pick up. Have the number of passenger shrank?
Let's get back to 2005 the year when government cut subsidy for gasoline and lead to 125% escalation on gasoline retail price. Car, including angkot, needs a lot of gas. Generating higher charges assuming constant drivers profits. Transportation cost is the biggest proportion of people budget. Hence, drop on purchasing power was inevitable notably for fixed income earner. The simple alternatives is to change the way they transport them self. Instead of took angkot with higher charge they coverted to motorcycle. Motorcycle purchasing purchase is now very easy because of the presence of motorcycle financing company. According to AISI in 2005 motorcycle production soared 31%y-y. Meanwhile in 2009 according to BPS, motorcycle number in Jakarta has reached 5.2m units and 1.035 additional units every days. I guess we have more hint for the missing passengers.
The growing motorcycles driver has cut the number of passenger for angkot and it gives more incentives for them to stop longer and aggravate traffic problem in Jakarta. The worsen traffic will then force people to convert their transportation to motorcycle even more. Angkot main rival is not only their peer but also the growing motorcycles drivers which has shrank the number of potential passengers.
