Jokowi: Vehicle Restriction Not Solution to Bogor Congestion

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Jakarta Governor-cum-president-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said the Bogor administration’s plans to bar vehicles bearing B license plates (registered in Jakarta) from entering Bogor would affect its neighboring cities.

Jokowi said the flow of traffic in and out of the city was relatively heavy at times. “This kind of insulation will lure protests from its surrounding cities,” he said at the City Hall on Friday, September 19, 2014.

Earlier reports said the Bogor administration was mulling over sterilizing the city from vehicles with B license plates in the wake of worsening congestion at several spots in Bogor as the existing roads could no longer accommodate the surging number of vehicles.

Jokowi suggested the capital’s satellite cities improve its public transport services as opposed to curtailing vehicles from outside their territories, among them by creating public transports from Jakarta to Bogor, and vice versa.

With regard to the restriction, Jokowi said it was also impossible for the capital to ban vehicles from outside of Jakarta from entering it, allowing for the Jakarta-Bogor route that had always been packed with motorists from Bogor to Jakarta on working days.

“Do we also have to stop them and give them tickets before entering Jakarta?” he said. 

LINDA HAIRANI