Avoid Density, Minister Of Transportation Budi Advises People To Go Home Early

Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi (Photo: Doc. Antara)

Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi advised the public to go home early in order to avoid congestion on the peak day of this year's Eid homecoming flow.

Budi said, the peak of this year's Eid homecoming flow is predicted to occur from April 18 to 21, 2023.

"For people who can take a day off, please go home early from April 13 to April 17 later because the roads are still not too crowded," he said, in Jakarta, Thursday, April 13.

Budi said that a number of efforts were also made by the government to break the density of the flow of passengers and vehicles on a certain day, so that there was no peak of the homecoming flow which was too high which caused the density to be uncontrollable.

"We hope that with the anticipatory efforts that have been made, the comparison between road capacity and transportation nodes with passenger volume and vehicle or volume to capacity (V/C) Ratio can remain below number 1 which means it is still smooth," he said.

There are a number of anticipatory efforts that have been made, including advancing the collective leave holiday to 19-25 April 2023. That way, there are additional days that people can use to travel earlier or not short on Eid al-Fitr.

"So the pressure on the peak day of homecoming flow can be pushed forward or in the days before peak day," he said.

In addition, said Budi, a number of transportation and road operators have given discount rates or promos to encourage people to go home early. Among them are toll road operators such as Jasa Marga and Hutama Karya.

Hutama Karya provided a 20% discount for the Trans Sumatra toll road on April 16-18 and backflow on April 26-28 2023. Meanwhile, Jasa Marga cut 20 percent at the Jakarta Cikampek toll rate in the period 16-18 April and 27-29 April 2023.

Train operator KAI also provides train discount rates for April 14-17, 2023. In addition, airlines such as Garuda Indonesia, Citilink, Transnusa and Super Jet and Lion Air also set discounts on tickets for the period April 13-17, 2023.

Furthermore, Budi said to anticipate the density of vehicle flows on the peak day of homecoming flow, various traffic engineering scenarios have been prepared.

Starting from contra flow, one way, odd-even, restrictions on freight transportation, rest area management, and so on.

"The traffic engineering will start on April 18, 2023, starting from the Cikampek Km 72 to Gerabng toll road Kalikangkung Km 414," he said.