"Wow!
What a traffic!" is probably the words that will come at first, when we
see the traffic condition in Bandung. As a part of big cities in
Indonesia, especially for Province Capital City, Bandung has a serious
traffic problem. For the past 2 years, the condition of traffic here had
lead to three major causes, those problems are should be more concerned
by the local government.
The
first problem we could easily found is, Angkot, a means of
transportation that in form of city car. Angkot, as another people
mentioned as "City's biggest traffic problem maker" has playing a big
role in making the traffic jam in the city, by attempting to pick up
passengers at unofficial and unapropriate places. In some cases, angkot
will instantly stop at first when they meet a passenger nearby. For such
people who in hurry, this will be good so that they can quickly taken
to the destination, but how about the others? Common result of this
action is a jam. When people are in rush, imagine the effect when this
is happend, people will try to slowing down and evade from the line. If
you think that it happens only for particular Angkot, maybe you should
think twice regarding the number of Angkot in Bandung, it is so
enormous, and most of them are doing the same. While bigger number of
angkot available is good to provide transportation, such behaviour would
make it a big problem.
How about the road?
Now
we come to the second important thing, the road. As we can see, people
are likely to use their own vehicle rather than public transportation,
and because of this, the road is full of cars everyday. While the number
of cars is increasing every years, the development of the roadway
doesn't has the same trend. The roads in Bandung today is as it was in
the past 10 years. This is because the city was designed as a
medium-cozy city, with medium road size. When i was in Bandung in 2005,
the road was still fit and cars were easily moved. One of the big road
called Cihampelas, where there are many clothing store and souvenirs
shop, is still available for two directions.
But
when i come back now in 2010, traffic jam is a common view everyday,
and the Cihampelas road is now like a small street, even it is for
one-way road. If i'm not mistaken, the last roadway development project
is the Pasopati Flyover bridge. It was initiated since 2003 as part of
inter-city Tol highway project, and finished in 2005. Perhaps it would
be one of the solution to the traffic problems, but it seems not giving
much help.
The
next is, Traffic Lights. Traffic Lights are almost broken and need to
be maintenanced. But, as long as i can see, they are not really being
carried out a lot. Many broken traffic lights can be found along the
main road such as Jl.PH H Mustofa, Jl.Surapati, Jl.Ir. Hj. Djuanda -
Dago; Jl. Cipaganti - Dr. Setiabudhi; Jl. Jend. Ahmad Yani; and even
Jl.Ibrahim Adjie which connecting Bandung and the sub-city,
Kiaracondong. Most of the problems are dead lamps, wrong colors--because
of broken electrical circuit inside, and one interesting incident is
that there are two traffic lights controlling two opposite directions
having the same green light at a time, and each directions are allowed
to turn right; so that vehicle from the front direction could be crashed
as the vehicles from the other direction wants to turn right.
All
of those problems are still happend today, for some reasons, i think
maybe the government want to be focus on tourism first, because Bandung
is well-known as beautiful city and even called "Paris van Java" where
we got everything in Bandung. But, if the city doesn't have a good
traffic management, and the road is not supporting enough, soon or later
we will find this city as crowd as Jakarta, which had an extremely
serious traffic problem compared to nearby cities.
Government
should take quick response to this, so we can still have Bandung as
Paris Van Java, beautiful, emerging creative city forever.
Iqbal Fathony Ramadhan [110420015]
