Public transportation development

Lets start with a few lessons from places across the oceans..

Japan, highways here have been taken over by private companies with public ownership. This policy was made to naturally increase quality and decrease toll rate. When companies have competition, they compete by increasing quality of service, increasing benefit, and lower prices. Competition within the control of the government makes a healthy competing environment and ever increase of quality in public service.

India, 80 percent of its vehichle population in big cities are private vehichles which shows simmilar character to that of Indonesia. The Indian ministry of tranportation has desirable standards for vehichle usage in cities. For populations up to 1 million people the desirable use of public transportation is up to 50-60%, while the real condition now is only 30%.

Chicago,40% of its public space is dedicated to transportation. Makes a very compact and highly mobile city. Followed by Paris with 23%, and Tokyo with 14% of transportation space.

The importance of intraurban transportation is paramount. The more people there are living in cities, the more percentage of mass transportation there should be. From 2010-2014 the predicted growth of transportation in Indonesia is 6,3% and to cope with this, there needs to be a 9,48% added investment each year for infrastructure and transportation system. Yet the government can only supply 10% from the total investment needed. From this fact, we can broadly think that the country needs extra money to invest in transportation infrastructure, needs investment from abroad, or try to control the growth and system of transportation. Physically the problem is not actually just the growth of vehichles in numbers, but the concentration of those rising numbers in urban areas.

Like bigger cities mentioned such as Chicago, Paris, and Tokyo, bigger cities need more public transportation as a solutoin for mobilization because considering the volume of space and the number of population, the numbers just doesn’t match. Mass tranportation system is fully required. For a city with a population of 1 million, 50% of tranportation needs to be public, and the other half private. Then again, Indonesia’s government at the moment can not supply these demands, so they encourage private bussiness to fill in the gap,still within the control of the Ministry of transportation. Considering the economic, political, and social factor in developing infrastructure and expensive cost in makin lines for railway mass transportation, the best and most likely form of public transportation would be the bus.

Like my previous postings, I always try to write something to sharpen my own goal on what I personally can do for the city. I work during the day, so I can only have a part of the night to think. Recently talking close friends like Budi, Seto, and Yegar, I kind of have a basic framework on what I need to do. Going back through my posts..

1. I first looked for ways to make a better city, I found the New Urbanism concept
2. I learned that urban areas are important for national economic growth
3. I narrowed my research on Indonesia’s urban areas and kampongs
4. I made a trial questionere about peoples satisfaction in the city, but I found out later on that there was already a more profesional survey on this so I didn’t bother to continue. Oh yeah, I found out that my hometown Yogyakarta is the most liveable city in Indonesia so I take it as a good research lab.
5. I temporeraly concluded that to make a better city, the unphyisical aspects are actually the most crucial aspects to develop first. Health and education. And the the local communities that contirbute to giving spirit in the city.
6. Transportation is paramount in the life of a city

And now, I have come to a step where while taking easy baby steps approaching local communities and making libraries, I need to make a business plan on public tranportation. This is my research for the moment.

1. Find out how many public transportation does Jogja really need at the moment
2. Is the number of existing public transportation enough?
3. What are the possibilities of introducing a new transportation company in the city? And how do we get there?
4. How about the business prospect?

I guess I’ll need to find these through the internet, and ask some questions to private transportation owners and bus companies disguissing as college students;p Which ever way, we’ll need to do it quick.