[sustran] Curitiba & Jakarta's metro

[Rob Cervero]

Curitiba's busway has been so successful -- at times a veritable elephant
train of double-articulated coaches -- even it is trying to convert some of
its bus corridors to
rail.

As someone who regularly crawled along two-lane Jalan Fatmawati for years, 
Jakarta's north-south corridor, IMO, is ripe for high-capacity transit.
The current traffic mess 
(particularly bad in the suburbs) is largely a product of unplanned growth.
 By adding huge
increments of new accessibility, a rail line would do as much as anything
to channel new
growth into efficient, mixed-use settlements, focused around station areas.
  And waiting
in the wings to funnel folks to and from the stations will be the ojek
motorcycle-taxis, bajaj three-wheelers,
kijang pirate taxis, and maybe even one day again, the becaks.  Providing
high-capacity trunkline
services remains a public-sector responsibility -- no one else can pull
this off.  And Jakarta's richly
endowed informal transport sector has always and will continue to provide
vital feeder connectivity to
main lines.  Such public-private partnerships, as tacit as they are, offer
the best hope of mounting 
respectable public transport services that effectively head off Jakarta's
currently dizzying pace of auto-motorization.