Jakarta is About to Become an Entirely New City

Whenever someone asks me where I live, I have to mentally prepare for the long list of questions that's bound to follow. "Kelapa Gading!? That's crazy far!" the conversation usually starts. Then, once they realize I live in North Jakarta, but work in the South, they start to ask how I can even do it. It's just so far. Traffic is so bad. What do you mean you take TransJakarta most of the way? (I've honestly grown so immune to the horrors of the busway that I could sleep through half the ride if I wanted to.)

But the travel time is still something very real. It takes me about two hours to make it down to VICE's office in South Jakarta, and that's only one way. Those are hours of my life I will never, ever get back.

Then, one day, I walked out of my home and realized that everything was about to change. Right there, opposite my apartment, is one of Jakarta's shiny new LRT stations, a stop on a new mass transit line that will get me all the way downtown for less than a cup of coffee at one of those fancy cafes near my office.

Then I realized, this isn't just going to change my life. It's going to change everything about Jakarta, a city that's been paralyzed by traffic jams and disconnected from any real transit system for years. This could be the start of a whole new city. But in what ways? I reached out to some experts to find out.

Jakarta is known for a lot of things, but good public transportation isn't one of them. Only 20 percent of the population uses the existing facilities (TransJakarta), mainly because the buses are uncomfortable and don’t even help all that much with the traffic problem. Jakarta first floated the idea of a mass transit line back in 1985— something would actually help alleviate some of the traffic — and it's been widely discussed since, but, until now, these conversations went nowhere.

After decades of debate, and false starts, the construction of both an MRT line (a subway) and an LRT line (light rail) began in October of 2013, under the administration of then-governor Joko Widodo. Now, we're closer than ever before to finally seeing the dream of mass transit become a reality, with the city running an actual, down to the second, countdown here. The planned start date for all lines is February of next year, but some segments of the system will begin operations in a matter of months.

Most Jakartans have undoubtably seen the construction of the lines somewhere in the city. But, personally, I had no idea how extensive this plan actually was until I saw this map.

That's nearly the entire city! Some of the suburbs too. And it's likely going to dramatically change the way we all live, work, and have fun in Indonesia's biggest city. Yayat Supriatna, an urban planning expert from Trisakti University, is here to tell us how.

I think everyone can get on board with this one. The MRT/ LRT system is not only vast, it's affordable, with early estimates placing the average fare at less than Rp 12,000 ($0.82 USD) a ride.

“I think that’s really cheap,” Yayat told VICE. “In Jakarta today, a person could spend around 30 percent of their income on transportation. In Singapore, for example, with similar Rapid Transits, the average spending for transportation is only around 3 percent. In China, it's 7 percent.”

Spending less than Rp 12,000 to travel across the city means that we'll all have more disposable income—money we can spend on random stuff we all love, like delicious, greasy martabak.

“There’s going to be a lot of TODs”, Yayat told VICE.

What's a TOD? It's shorthand for "Transit Oriented Development"—basically new places to eat, drink, and chill that are built around transit stops. This means an end of entertainment being centralized in expensive, mostly southern, neighborhoods and the end of the kinds of bougie, Instagram-able monoculture that these pricy neighborhoods tend to produce.

"There’s going to be new places to hang out at, to eat at, to even cheat at," Yayat said with a laugh. "Like BNI City will become more popular because it’s so close to the airport. If you’re broke, eh, I guess Lebak Bulus would do as well."

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But it also means that some of our favorite spots in the city are going to get a lot more crowded as well. Yayat explained the network in terms of "fat stations," the ones with heavy traffic, and the "bones stations," all the stops in-between. While the bones are going to get a little fatter, the fat is going to get pudgier too.

“But this depends on the network,” Yayat explained. “Places like Blok M, Ratu Plaza, and Bunderan HI will naturally have higher volume of visitors. We call these 'Fat Stations’."

And a latent effect of all those TODs will be an improvement of local economies, as those living close to train stations will now have a fresh market for new businesses and services.

Sorry car lovers, while we are going to have a lot more places to hang out, the trip there is going to be hell. Yup, even more hellish than today, if you can believe it.

“Jakarta is going to be absolute hell for those with cars,” Yayat told VICE. “The government is going to make it more complicated for car users to get around. For example, this new Odd-Even policy is likely going to be continued, and I believe the cost for parking will increase.”

This car hellscape is already happening in some parts of Jakarta. In my home neighborhood of Kelapa Gading, the roads were already made narrower to squeeze in some new stations, causing massive traffic jams. Traveling down the five kilometer stretch from Kelapa Gading to Arion can now take close to an hour by car, during peak travel times.

But there's a silver lining to this nightmare as well—cleaner air. Vehicle exhaust is responsible for 70 percent of the larger pollution particulates in the city's air, according to government data. So less cars means cleaner air for all of us.

"This is going to definitely help with the pollution problem,” Yayat said.

Right now, a lot of Jakartans live in a bubble. They only interact with people of the same class, religion, and educational background. This is because many people spend most of their time in cars, and the rest of it hanging out and living with people who are a lot like them.

Once you spend your days on public transit, all of those bubbles start to evaporate.

“Structure builds culture,” Yayat told VICE.

And the more time you spend around others, the more considerate you might become.

"Let’s take a look at the Trains we have now,” Yayat said. “There is a new culture within the stations—the culture of being orderly, of being punctual, because you have to be on time so you don’t miss your train. People don’t smoke so it’s not disturbing for others, and they give up their seats for the elderly. There is a culture of concern for others.”

This is the polar opposite of our current car culture, where everyone is just fighting for the space to move forward, a few centimeters at a time.

Jakartans, unfortunately, hate to walk. There's a lot of reasons why this is true, most of which my fellow VICE writer Arzia discovered when she tried to walk to work instead of taking an ojek. The main reason though? It's really, really difficult. The sidewalks suck when they're there, and sometimes they don't even exist.

But in a city where we ride mass transit around, we're going to have to walk, which means better pedestrian infrastructure, as long as the city can keep the whole thing together.

“Jakartans hate walking," Yayat said. "Simply having the MRT won’t change that. They see an 'ojek online' and they get lazy. Without having the ojeks so readily available, Jakartans would have to travel the walking distance by foot.”

One study found that people who commute by train are nearly three kilograms lighter than those who drive, but correlation doesn't always equal causation.

“Our girls would be thin, like the Singaporeans,” Yayat said with a laugh.

Guys too, probably.

The thing about finally getting mass transit after all these years, is that it's coming to a city that's been built for cars. So the city needs to make improvements, especially around the "fat stations," in order to accommodate for our new reality.

"There’s going to be thousands of people crowding the stations everyday, so the sidewalks around there need to be comfortable," Yayat said. "Plant some trees, so it’s not hot to walk. Take the Sudirman sidewalk, for example. Oh my God, it’s so tiny it’s ridiculous!”

No one is saying a few mass transit lines are going to turn Jakarta into the best city, ever. There's still a lot of other stuff it needs to fix. But it's not going to hurt it either, and, I for one, and pretty excited about seeing what kind of city Jakarta ends up being.