Jakarta during monthly Car Free Day, on the last Sunday every month. The Thamrin and Sudirman avenue from National Monument to Senayan area is closed from cars and any motorized vehicles from 6 AM to 12 AM, except for TransJakarta Bus Rapid Transit system. Morning gymnastics, futsal games, jogging, bicycling, badminton, karate, an on-street library and musical performances take over the road. May 2010
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Location Jakarta, Indonesia, Asia
  • News ‘A bus is open to everyone regardless of class’: riding the world’s biggest network, theguardian.com (Nov 30, 2023)

Lantan Bentala[edit | edit source]

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Lantan Bentala is a foundation concerned with environment located in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Lantan derived from ancient Minang language meaning care, nurture, protect, and defend; while Bentala derived from ancient Malay language which means earth. Yes. The Earth is our Mother. All of us came from her womb, and will be back to her when we already finish our journey here. Protecting her is the ultimate imperative for humankind to survive in this beautiful but fragile planet.

Let's join together to protect, defend and nurture our Mother Earth! You heard our Mother's call, didn't you? She needs us now more than ever in human history. Our life really depends on how we together answer that call.

Open spaces[edit | edit source]

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In June 2011, Jakarta had only 10.5% green open spaces (Ruang Terbuka Hijau), although this grew to 13.94%. Public parks are included in public green open spaces. There are about 300 integrated child-friendly public spaces (RPTRA) in the city in 2019. As of 2014, 183 water reservoirs and lakes supported the greater Jakarta area.

Rivers[edit | edit source]

Participatory mapping for disaster preparedness[edit | edit source]

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For managing risk effectively, it needs extensive data for making decisions on investments in preparedness, mitigation, and response. Until recently, detailed information on disaster situation (flooding) was hardly available at local level. A pilot project in Jakarta, led by the Province of Jakarta's Disaster Management Agency collected high-resolution data to inform flood preparedness and contingency. Later, the data, which was accessible by the community and the general public, was used in 2011/2012 Jakarta contingency emergency planning exercise. The risk information it produced was very useful for decision makers in preparedness, development and investment planning.Petabencana.id can now be consulted and it contains a flood map. Some additional info may be found at OpenStreetMap. It is an online, open-source platform, which relies on participatory mapping conducted by local communities, private and public actors who collect the detailed information about a given area and share it, meet the needs in disaster situation.

About Ciliwung[edit | edit source]

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The Ciliwung (often written as Ci Liwung as the "ci" prefix simply translates as "river"; also as Tjiliwoeng in Dutch, Sundanese: ᮎᮤᮜᮤᮝᮥᮀ) is a 119km long river in the northwestern region of Java where it flows through two provinces, West Java and the special region of Jakarta. The natural estuary of the Ciliwung River, known as the Kali Besar ("Big River"), was an important strategic point for trade in the precolonial and colonial periods and was instrumental in the founding of the port city of Jakarta, but has been lost from a reorganization of the watercourse of the rivers around the area into canals.

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The river water is murky once it reaches Jakarta because the area of its flow is a disposal area. As a result, the river is growing shallower and the flow slower. In 2014, the Audit Board of Indonesia released a four-year audit of the river and found that seventeen separate companies had been polluting its waters, submitting a report to the police.

Indonesian Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR) has a separate Ciliwung Cisadane River Region Center (BBWSCC). DKI Jakarta Provincial Government and BBWSCC have an agreement on the normalization of some rivers in Jakarta. The DKI Provincial Government is tasked with freeing land for normalization needs to be carried out by BBWSCC. A restoration project is undertaken to widen and water flow of the river. The restoration project is divided into four sections with a total length of about 19 km, extending from Manggarai to the Jl. TB Simatupang area in South Jakarta. Ciliwung will also be widened from the present 25 meters up to 40 – 50 meters. It is expected that the water flow will increase from the current 200 cubic meters per second to 570 cubic meters per second.

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The section of Ciliwung in Jakarta is heavily polluted. Informal settlements or slums flourished on the banks of Ciliwung, increasing the amount of waste and reducing the surface area of the river. Some canals were completely blocked by slums and people created informal gardens inside by drying the canal. Water maintenance and ecological awareness are minimal. Other sources of pollution originate from agricultural runoff of upstream river users and industrial pollution. Flooding is a problem in Ciliwung. With many of the original forests converted into settlements around the Puncak area, the flooding has worsened each year.

In 2012, the government of Indonesia announced a 20-year plan to clean up the Ciliwung River, which kicked off with a $10 million restoration project that will include the construction of a waste processing facility in 2013 and an education centre for riverside communities.  The city administration now hires over 4000 workers to regularly clean the city’s rivers, canals, lakes, and coastal areas. Ex-Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama also plans to turn parts of the Ciliwung riverbank into a tourist site.

Sustainable transport[edit | edit source]

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As a metropolitan area of about 30 million people, Jakarta has a variety of transport systems. Jakarta was awarded 2021 global Sustainable Transport Award (STA) for integrated public transportation system.

The city prioritized development of road networks, which were mostly designed to accommodate private vehicles. A notable feature of Jakarta's present road system is the toll road network. Composed of an inner and outer ring road and five toll roads radiating outwards, the network provides inner as well as outer city connections. An 'odd-even' policy limits road use to cars with either odd or even-numbered registration plates on a particular day as a transitional measure to alleviate traffic congestion until the future introduction of electronic road pricing.

There are many bus terminals in the city, from where buses operate on numerous routes to connect neighborhoods within the city limit, to other areas of Greater Jakarta and to cities across the island of Java. The biggest of the bus terminal is Pulo Gebang Bus Terminal, which is arguably the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia. Main terminus for long distance train services are Gambir and Pasar Senen. Whoosh High-speed railways is connecting Jakarta to Bandung and another one is at the planning stage from Jakarta to Surabaya.

As of September 2023, Jakarta's public transport service coverage has reached 86 percent, which is targeted to Increase to 95 percent. Rapid transit in Greater Jakarta consists of TransJakarta bus rapid transit, Jakarta LRT, Jakarta MRT, KRL Commuterline, Jabodebek LRT, and Soekarno-Hatta Airport Rail Link. The city administration is building transit oriented development like Dukuh Atas TOD and CSW-ASEAN TOD in several area across Jakarta to facilitate commuters to transfer between different mode of public transportation.

Privately owned bus systems like Kopaja, MetroMini, Mayasari Bakti and PPD also provide important services for Jakarta commuters with numerous routes throughout the city, many routes are/will replaced/replaced by Minitrans and Metrotrans buses. Pedicabs are banned from the city for causing traffic congestion. Bajaj auto rickshaw provide local transportation in the back streets of some parts of the city. Angkot microbuses also play a major role in road transport of Jakarta. Taxicabs and ojeks (motorcycle taxis) are available in the city. As of January 2023, about 2.6 million people use public transportation daily in Jakarta.

TransJakarta[edit | edit source]

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TransJakarta (stylised as transjakarta, often erroneously called Busway, sometimes shortened as TJ and branded as TiJe) or Jakarta BRT is a bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Jakarta, Indonesia. The first BRT system in Southeast Asia, it commenced operations on 15 January 2004 to provide a fast public transport system to help reduce rush hour traffic. The system is considered as the first revolutionary public transit mode in the capital city of Indonesia. The buses run in dedicated lanes (busways), and ticket prices are subsidised by the regional government. TransJakarta has the world's longest BRT system (251.2 km in length), which operates about 4,300 buses. TransJakarta aims to have 50 percent of its fleet be electric buses by 2027. By 2030, the aim is for the entire TransJakarta ecosystem to use electric buses. As of November 2023, it serves an average of 1.134 million passengers daily.

As of September 2019, Transjakarta is currently testing electric buses, with Bundaran Senayan – Monas as its first route. Transjakarta has undertaken an ambitious plan to expand its electric bus (e-bus) fleet to 10,000 units over the decade.

Environment and livability challenges[edit | edit source]

Jakarta suffers from severe problems of environment and livability:

  • Air pollution, due not only to vehicles, but a culture of burning waste, including leaves and other matter which could be composted, as well as plastics which release toxins when burned.
  • Severe traffic congestion for most of the day. Traffic does not flow smoothly until after around 10pm on weekdays.
  • Poor public transport.
    • Jakarta is sometimes described as the world's largest city without a "metro" style rapid transit rail system.
    • Trains operate in limited areas. Until recently these have been unreliable and very crowded. Recently, however, a revamped timetable in July 2011 is simplified (from 3 classes into 2, scrapping express trains) and much more frequent.
    • The busway system (Trans Jakarta, similar in concept to Curitiba transportation) has developed much more slowly than planned, and has inadequate buses for the passenger load, resulting in delays and overcrowding. At many bust stops, passengers wait at open doors above the busy roadway, with no safety barrier.
  • Flooding
  • Subsidence of land due to extraction of groundwater
  • Pollution of groundwater due to the
  • Littering, which also aggravates flooding problems by blocking drains.
  • Corruption - diversion of allocated funds makes solving any of the other problems much more difficult.

About Jakarta[edit | edit source]

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Jakarta (; Indonesian pronunciation: [dʒaˈkarta] , Betawi: Jakarté), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (Indonesian: Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta, abbreviated to DKI Jakarta) and formerly known as Batavia until 1949, is the nation's capital city and the centre of the largest metropolis of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta is the largest metropole in Southeast Asia, and serves as the diplomatic capital of ASEAN. Jakarta is bordered by two provinces: West Java to the south and east; and (since 2000, when it was separated from West Java) Banten to the west. Its coastline faces the Java Sea to the north, and it shares a maritime border with Lampung to the west. Jakarta's metropolitan area is ASEAN's second largest economy after Singapore.

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Keywords asia cities
Authors Chris Watkins, Phil Green
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 2 pages link here
Aliases Jakarta
Impact 651 page views
Created July 8, 2011 by Chris Watkins
Modified January 24, 2024 by Phil Green
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