Christmas Backflow, 50 Thousand Vehicles Via Cipali Toll Road

A total of 50,000 vehicles from East Java to Jakarta are predicted to pass on the Cikopo-Palimanan (Cipali) Toll Road, West Java, at the peak of the backflow of the 2023 Christmas holiday.

"It is estimated that today is the first phase of the return flow for the Christmas holiday, it is predicted that there are 50,000 homecoming vehicles from east Java to Jakarta," said the Head of the Traffic Corps (Kakorlantas) of the National Police Inspector General Pol Aan Suhanan in Cirebon, West Java, Tuesday, December 26.

Kakorlantas said that although tonight is predicted to be the peak of the Christmas backflow, the flow of traffic from Semarang and Cirebon on the Cipali Toll Road is still sloping and relatively safe.

Therefore, said Aan, his party ensures that there is no need to intervene in the form of a contraflow or one way that can be enforced by looking at the situational conditions on the Cipali Toll Road.

"If you look at the Palimanan traffic counting, it has only reached 2,164 vehicles per hour. Intervention efforts are taken when the number of vehicles reaches 3,500 per hour," he said.

Aan said that from the monitoring results in Central Java, the number of vehicles passing on the Cipali Toll Road tends to decrease with the highest number of 2,193 vehicles per hour.

According to him, if there is no increase in the number of vehicles, the passing vehicles are local trips such as the Semarang agglomeration.

"Because our traffic counting is at KM 414 Semarang. Then in Cikampek the number of vehicles per hour has only reached 4,345, meaning that the Cikampek Toll Road does not need to carry out traffic engineering," he said.

Kakorlantas explained that the Cikampek Toll Road for the implementation of traffic engineering on the backflow of this Christmas must meet a lower limit of 5,500 vehicles per hour.

Based on calculations, he said, his party has temporarily postponed the implementation of one way, which was originally planned to be enforced at 14.00 WIB, from KM 188 Palimanan to KM 72 Cikampek.

According to him, if the number of vehicles increases, a number of efforts will be made starting from the implementation of contraflow to one way or the engineering of a piece which will start from the rest area of the Cipali Toll Road to Japek.

"At certain hours there is a buildup of vehicles in the rest area, a piece of contraflow will be carried out," he said.