My Busway Day: It Begins

This summer, while transitioning between jobs, I had two glorious weeks off. I decided spend one of these magical free days traversing Jakarta on the Busway. It seemed like a fun way to see parts of town I don't normally get to. Plus, I actually thought I might be able to ride all the lines in one day, which turned out to be a pipe dream.

(Members of my family will now be wincing, because riding all the busway lines in a day is exactly what our late Uncle Jack would have done, and Uncle Jack was definitely a bit of an Odd Duck. I guess biology is destiny, after all.)

I got to our local station, Benhill, at around 7 a.m. Things were hopping -- lots of foot traffic, lots of road traffic.
,The breakfast vendors were in full swing. This guy is selling sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, probably with a little chicken inside, as well as an assortment of pastries. These people start early -- probably by 5, although I've never been around to see -- and they're usually gone before 9.

Here's another pastry basket. Don't be alarmed by the green bread -- it's flavored with pandan, Indonesia's answer to vanilla.

The station wasn't too crowded. I waited inside for about five minutes, thinking about the warning a taxi driver had given me a month or two before: Watch out for men in suits and jackets on the busway. They'll hypnotize you and steal your wallet and cellphone! I saw some guys in business attire, but they seemed to be innocently reading the paper. Of course, that was probably their cover.


Finally the bus came. I had decided to ride all the way up to the Chinese end of North Jakarta and then double back to get on one of the East-West lines. This was cheating, in a sense, since I've done the north-south trip many times ... but I also know it's the best line on the busway, and I wasn't in a hurry to start dealing with long lines and packed buses. So I set off to Kota.

to be continued ...

Busway

The busway is Jakarta's first stab at a public mass transit system. We only use it for long trips, but when you have to get across town it's a pretty good option -- cheaper and faster than a taxi.

I had never heard of a busway before I came here. Apparently they borrowed the idea from Bogota, Colombia. Basically, it's a bus system with its own lanes.


In the photo above, we're looking straight ahead from a bus down a blissfully empty lane, and the traffic is backed up in the two lanes to the left.

The crucial element is the little concrete barrier running down the left side of the bus lane. Some sections of the busway don't have that, so other drivers ignore the rules and weave in and out of the bus lane, and then the whole advantage is lost.

The busway has dedicated stations with turnstiles; you can't just flag down a bus. In that sense it's more like a subway or light rail system.


They're building busways all over Jakarta now, which makes the traffic and pollution even worse, plus they're tearing down trees along the roads. Hopefully it'll be worth it in the end.

Fighting chaos with chaos

Home smoggy home: why Jakarta needs mass transit in the first place

Jakarta's various mass transit projects are supposed to tame the craziness on the streets, but sometimes the projects themselves appear just as chaotic.

This weekend the city opened four new busway lines. But instead of the full fleet of 216 buses, there will only be 32 for at least the first month, because the buses haven't been finished yet. And there's no electronic ticketing system, because the bidding process for that hasn't been finished yet.

If you want to complain, you'll have to wait, because there's no management company for the four lines; the tender for that isn't done yet either.

You'd almost think the governor is trying to kill this thing. But the busway is his pet project, one he's gone out on a limb for, so that hardly seems possible.

I don't get why they're bidding out the ticketing and management at this stage anyway. There are three lines open already; ultimately there are supposed to be 15. Wouldn't you want the same management and ticketing system for the whole thing?

Arguably, you could keep the system on its toes and keep getting the best deal by bidding out each phase. On the other hand, the bidding process is one of the biggest opportunities for corruption. Any thoughts from more seasoned Jakarta observers?

A tug-of-war with Mother Earth

I was walking to the busway when I passed these guys pulling on a rope connected to something down in the sewer system. They were doing a one, two, three HEAVE! sort of thing, and whatever it was they were pulling on didn't appear to be moving at all.


They're all wearing hats because the rain was just pounding down; taking a break did not seem to be an option, at least in the boss's mind.

The fabulous twenties machine

One measure of the income gap in Jakarta is the fact that money from the ATM is so hard to use on the street.

Most ATMs spit out 50,000 or 100,000 rupiah notes -- about $5 and $10, respectively. But if you want to buy fried rice on the street for 6,000, the guys selling it often won't have change. They'll typically go around to other street sellers until they find someone who can break it.

Even paying for a 20,000 rp taxi fare with a 50,000 can be difficult. And the 100k bills! They're practically useless outside expensive hotels, restaurants and malls.


There are several solutions to this problem (if having access to large denominations of money can even be called a problem -- which of course it can't). First, you can stock up at one of the rare and sought-after twenties machines. I know of only two: one near Deutsche Bank, and the other in an apartment tower where some friends used to live.

Another is to become a notorious bill-scrounger. These are the people who, after dining out with a group, shamelessly scoop up all the small bills from the kitty and replace them with 50s and 100s. This is not wrong, exactly, but it doesn't seem like good behavior either.

Another is to frequent businesses that break large bills. The busway is excellent for this purpose because they don't bat an eye if you pay for a 3500 rp ticket with a 50,000 note.

I've seen a lot of amazing things in Indonesia -- a volcanic eruption, a lake of boiling mud, a guy who drinks his own pee -- but one of my enduring memories is of watching a woman pay for a 2,000 rp bemo ride with a 100,000 note. She was so nonchalant! It was like watching someone do a perfect triple back flip off the diving board in the Olympics. I wanted to hold up a little sign that said "10.0". I think she must have known the driver, though.

PDA

Public displays of affection between couples are rare in Jakarta, but a bumpy busway ride provides a good excuse. Riding double on motorbikes seems to fulfill the same function.

Here we go again?

We woke to the sound of rain tapping on the roof, which is always pleasant, but which also has a distinctly ominous quality at this time of year in Jakarta. It was one year ago, almost to the day, that the city was struck by catastrophic floods.

It was the kind of heavy rain that seemed ready to keep going for weeks. We walked out of the apartment to look for a cab, and within moments we were drenched up to our knees, despite our umbrellas. The sky was dark -- or as Wallace Stevens might have said, it was evening all morning.


Sure enough, the flood-prone parts of the city were underwater. The roads were mostly fine, but every now and then you'd hit a major water crossing. We had a mid-morning appointment in town. It ended up taking much of the day just to get there and back.



We took the busway home because we heard it was pretty much the only way to get down Jl. Sudirman, the main north-south thoroughfare. The area around the Sarinah department store, where we got stuck two years ago, was flooded. Passing through it, I kind of felt like I was riding in a gondola.



We made a bet on how deep it would be at Benhill Market. Chad thought there would only be scattered pools of water left; I said it would be ankle-deep. Guess who won?

When will I learn?

"The rainy season is over" I said to Chad when we walked out the front door yesterday. It felt like someone had turned on the giant oven that is Jakarta, and it was going to slowly heat up to the melting point from now until August.

Wet graffiti, wet plant

Then I went Menteng Dalam to do some man-on-the-street interviews. As soon as I stepped out of the cab, the skies opened. It rained with great force for over an hour. I had to take refuge in a little noodles, eggs, photocopies, detergent, softdrinks and medicine store. The woman there was nice and gave me water but wouldn't let me take her picture.

Your one-stop everything store

The rain totally snarled the roads and the 4-mile trip home took an hour and a half. The taxi guy even drove over the concrete dividers into the busway lane - KATHUNK KATHUNK KATHUNK KATHUNK, with an extra, ominous bang on the undercarriage - to escape total gridlock.

My new rule: never say "The rainy season is over" unless you have an umbrella handy.

My Busway Day: Kota

There's a famous old train station in northern Jakarta that I've always admired from the bus window. Since I was being a transportation geek anyway, I figured I'd go have a look inside.

Like so many buildings in Jakarta, Kota Station is blockaded by fences and barricades. It's a bit of a chore to get in. But it's worth the effort.

It was built around 1870, with this really lovely vaulted ceiling. It's still a working train station.

The route map filled me with travel desires. After all, who wouldn't want to go to Cikadongdong, Gadobangkong or Tagogapu?

Unfortunately, almost as soon as I got to the station my camera batteries died. I decided to walk down to the Glodok marketplace to buy more. On the way out I bought some lumpia from the Bicycling Lumpia Man.

Lumpia are the Indonesian version of egg rolls. These ones were small, greasy and tasty. They came with a little baggie of sweet peanut sauce that seemed to proclaim: sure, this is a Chinese-derived snack in a Chinese part of town, but still, it is JAVANESE food.