Jakarta currently is currently suffering more problems than normal and this is being made slightly more worse by the ongoing daily or every other day rain storms and showers across the city. It being the dry season, the amount of rain falling currently makes you wonder if there will actually be a period of time where it will not rain. Last year I think there was at least a couple of months where the rain did stop and everything started to dry out completely until the rainy season began again in November. This year especially this month there has been a lot of storms and heavy showers resulting in more queues, longer rides home and more mud and muck to get through.
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| Dry season weather seems to be slightly less dry than normal (http://www.thejakartapost.com/) |
There has been a fair amount of localised flooding causing the city to grind to halt and its not a happy time getting to and from work.
With the closure of parts of the main roads in the city due to new roads being built over existing ones the density of traffic has become even worse. The governor of Jakarta has also closed all bus lanes to anything but buses, and built concrete barriers along side them all to prevent access meaning that from 3 possible lanes of traffic there are now only 2 available. This and sheer volume of traffic has increased my journey to work by 20 minutes. From tomorrow the city is introducing a new traffic system for odd/even traffic plate numbers in the hope that it will reduce cars and traffic and put people on buses, whilst acknowledging that the traffic will be chaotic else where in the city because drivers will still need to get places. Also there could be far more bikes on the road as the rules only apply to cars and vans and things.
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| Bus lane full of TransJakarta buses (http://thecityfix.com/) |
I have given up taking the easiest and quickest route to work as it takes far too long so I am pretty much taking the same route I take on the way home and it is taking me longer now to get to work than it does to come home which is a change in my journey times. It now takes about 50 minutes to go 18 Km to work and 40 minutes to go home. Considering I am on a bike, the journey by car increases in time to get home by an hour but the same time roughly to get to work because the toll way out of the city is normally pretty empty.
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| Riding in this is not annoying at all, ever.... |
I doubt very much the new traffic policies will change things much because the traffic problems will shift as will the times people get into and out of the city to avoid the rules. I am sure once the fines begin then there will some slight improvement and in 2018 once all the building work is complete, maybe it will feel easier to get around the city.
All I know is that on my days off, heading west or north is not really a fun thing to do and so choosing alternative places to go becomes more of a challenge.
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| My Journey in April which has a lot of straight roads and was quite quick |
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| My journey now with lots of roads and changes in direction to get to and from work |
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