Widodo inaugurates Jakarta’s 1st subway
Credit to Author: ASSOCIATED PRESS| Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2019 16:15:32 +0000
JAKARTA, Indonesia: Indonesia’s long-awaited first subway opened Sunday in the country’s capital with the aim of relieving crippling traffic gridlock in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
Minutes after inaugurating the 16-kilometer (10-mile) transit line running south from Jakarta’s downtown, President Joko Widodo presided over a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the beginning of the second phase: Eight-kilometer (five-mile) northward line planned for completion by 2024. The two projects are being built at a cost of $2.6 billion.
“Today we will begin a new civilization by operating the first phase of mass rapid transit in Jakarta,” Widodo told several thousand guests and residents at the inauguration.
The line that opened Sunday includes seven elevated and six underground stations built by two consortiums of local and Japanese companies. Passengers can ride for free until the end of the month, after which operator PT Mass Rapid Transit Jakarta has said tickets would cost the equivalent of between 70 cents and $1.
Widodo, who is campaigning for reelection, told the crowd that he has instructed Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan to begin the next phase of construction of an east-west line covering a distance of 87 kilometers this year.
Jakarta’s first subway line, the latest of many infrastructure improvements across the world’s fourth most populous nation, is aimed at helping it catch up with other southeast Asian capitals such as Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok in public transport. Jakarta is officially home to about 10 million people, but the population of the greater metropolitan area swells to 30 million.
The project, funded through a loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), has been planned since the 1980s, but its construction was hampered by political crises, red tape and funding disagreements. Widodo was the Jakarta governor when construction finally kicked off in October 2013.
JICA has predicted that without a major investment in transportation, Jakarta would be overwhelmed by traffic jams by 2020. Annual losses from congestion are forecast to reach $6.5 billion by next year.
AP
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