East Java Tourism News

Exodus preparation in full swing

September 19th, 2007

Of the 14 million people expected to travel to their hometown for the annual Idul Fitri holiday, the government expects about half to depend on buses for transportation.

In addition, however, 97 ferries, 212 trains, 528 passenger ships and 211 planes are ready for the Islamic holiday exodus.

Director General for Land Transportation at the Transportation Ministry, Iskandar Abubakar, said this year there would be 30,000 buses able to carry 15 million passengers, compared to last year’s figures of 29,000 buses with a capacity of 14 million people.

“Although we plan to increase the number of buses, the load factor will be low,” Iskandar said Monday.

“Only about seven million people will use buses.

“Instead, they tend to use private vehicles or airplanes.

“The shift causes low demand on buses or other land transportation,” he said.

More than 1.8 million people are predicted to use motorcycles rather than public transportation, which would be an increase of some 30 percent on last year, Iskandar said.

“The increasing number of motorcycles on the road will create a special problem as it may cause a lot of traffic accidents.”

But Iskandar said train travel was still the most popular way for most Indonesians to reach their hometown for the holiday.

At Jakarta’s Gambir station, executive class tickets to Surabaya and Malang in East Java, Semarang in Central Java and Yogyakarta have been sold out for more than a week.

State-owned railway company PT Kereta Api said it decided to issue additional tickets for executive and business classes and has provided additional economy class seats.

But PT Kereta Api spokesman Noor Hamidi said he did not expect numbers to surge this year — instead the company was expecting a decrease from 2.63 million passengers in 2006 to 2.62 million for 2007.

The government said it would maintain a set limit for the upper and lower fares for buses at Rp 130 per passenger per kilometer and Rp 80 per passenger per kilometer respectively.

“For trains, economy classes will not experience the increasing ticket prices,” Iskandar said.

“But for non-economy classes, we will let PT Kereta Api decide.”

Iskandar said although the number of airplanes had been decreased to 226 planes, carrying capacity would be increased from 2.3 million passengers to 2.6 million people thanks to larger carriers. (13)

Source:  The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Entry Filed under: East Java News