Tighter Airport Services: Jakarta, West Java

The Directorate General of Land Transportation will implement a stricter, quality-based approach when selecting shuttle service providers to link Soekarno-Hatta International Airport with nearby cities.

“We used to do quantity licensing in which companies with the most units of vehicles won the tender. Now, we are doing quality licensing,” the director of traffic at the directorate general, Suroyo Alimoeso, said.

Speaking at a public transportation discussion, he said the focus on quality licensing meant the most eligible contender would have to provide the best services at the cheapest price.

In addition to the qualifications of the service providers’ drivers, emissions and vehicle age will also be taken into consideration in the tender process.

The directorate general said the tender process for routes linking the airport in Tangerang, Banten, with Bandar Lampung and the West Java cities of Cirebon and Cikampek will be held by the end of this year.

Currently, a shuttle service already runs from Bandung Super Mall in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung to the airport.
Suroyo said Bandung residents feel the benefits of the service and highlighted that around 13 percent of passengers coming through the international airport hail from Bandung.

“Low-cost air carriers are getting more popular each day, so land transportation needs to balance the public’s demands,” he said.

However, not all players are overly excited by the regulator’s plans.

Chairman of the Organization of Land Transportation Owners, Murpi Hutagalung, said the government should have involved the organization in formulating its policies.

“They should have checked whether other modes of transportation would not be badly affected by the existence of the new airport shuttles,” he told reporters. “The taxis could also be affected.”

He insisted that the government avoid creating new means of transportation from the airport. “I don’t want the (existing) modes of transportation in this country to be wrecked.”

Separately, Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) chairman Bambang Susantono said that much of Indonesia’s transportation infrastructure required renewal through fresh investment.

“This leads to the factor of safety that most people in the country are still unaware of,” he said during a book launch and seminar organized by MTI.

The book, which discusses transportation safety, is the second volume of an expected trilogy. Bambang and several other members of MTI, which has around 500 members, wrote the book collaboratively.

The first volume addresses land transportation in Indonesia, while the third book will examine the country’s railway system. “We’ll launch the third one hopefully by the end of this year,” he said.

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo