By Ainur Rohmah
JAKARTA
Indonesian capital Jakarta is the world’s most vehicle-congested city, according to a survey published Wednesday.
Using data from vehicle sat navs, the study of 78 countries found drivers stop-start 33,240 times on average over the course of a year.
Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, came second in the research by engine oil maker Castrol Magnatec, with an average of 32,520 stop-starts recorded.
News of their city’s dubious claim to fame was greeted with little surprise by Jakartans.
Ari Budiani is among those rising early to avoid the rush hour in a metropolitan area of 10.2 million people.
"I now prefer to get to the office by commuter line rather than the car, even though I still have to take into account the rush hour," the mother-of-one told The Anadolu Agency.
Ardaiyene, who like many Indonesians only uses one name, takes a bus from home at 7 a.m. every working day. Her worst commute saw her arrive at work four hours later. On a good day she can make it in an hour, assisted by the city’s dedicated bus lanes.
One upside of the congestion is that it has taught her good time-management.
"Congestion makes us more resilient to survive in a bad situation,” Ardaiyene, 27, told AA. “Not everyone can survive with congestion; the capital is hard."
A significant contributing factor to Jakarta’s traffic congestion is its lack of a rail system.
"If big cities like Jakarta do not have a rail-based transport system, they will definitely get jammed,” Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, was quoted as saying by the Merdeka news website. “Japan, which already has, is still stuck."
He called for those living in the metropolitan area, known as Jabodetabek after the towns that make up the region, to remain patient until a new rail system, Jakarta MRT, is opened in 2018.
Aside from the absence of a rail system, public policy analyst Andrinof Chaniago described the problems facing Jakarta.
He said via Twitter that the conurbation has a shortage of road space, and the optimum space given to roads is 20 percent of the surface area but in the capital it currently stands at just over six percent.
Also a lack of facilities for pedestrians, such as footbridges and tunnels, means traffic has to slow for people crossing roads.
The tendency for Jakartans to live in houses rather than flats has increased the city’s sprawl, resulting in longer journeys and greater reliance on private vehicles.
Another factor is the city’s rate of growth -- more than 4.5 percent a year, with the majority working in the center.
After Istanbul, Mexico City is the most congested, followed by Indonesia’s second city Surabaya, St Petersburg, Moscow, Rome, Bangkok, Guadalajara and Buenos Aires.
Tampere in Finland suffers the least congestion.
