Many New Toll Roads, Commission V DPR Asks To Anticipate Congestion Points In Nataru 2024

Toll road illustration (Photo: dock. Antara)

JAKARTA - Commission V of the DPR asked the government, in this case the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of PUPR, to anticipate new congestion points during the 2023 Christmas and 2024 New Year (Nataru) holidays. This anticipation needs to be carried out in line with the many new toll roads that have been operating this year.

As is known, the Nataru 2024 holiday period will soon arrive. The Ministry of Transportation itself has projected that the number of travelers will reach 107.6 million people. This figure jumped 143 percent of the total 2023 Nataru travelers. Where, as many as 39.9 million travelers are projected to still use private cars.

Chairman of Commission V of the DPR, Lasarus said this step needed to be taken because if you reflect on previous experiences, the existence of new toll roads changes the unexpected pattern of congestion.

Many congestion points that occur without us realizing it will apparently change the pattern of traffic jams. This must be anticipated," Lasarus said at the DPR Commission V Joint Working Meeting, Tuesday, November 21.

For example, continued Lasarus, during the Eid holiday the previous year, there was a traffic jam in the roads around Merak Harbor to Bakauheni. Even the density also reached the Merak Toll Gate.

"We never thought that Merak and Bakauheni Ports would be that crowded. I saw that from our treatment we were surprised, we were also surprised why the buildup point occurred here," he said.

Meanwhile, Minister of Public Works and Housing Rakyat (PUPR) Basuki Hadimuljono, said that this year there was indeed an additional toll road with a total length of 410 kilometers (km).

Of the total, continued Basuki, as many as 218 km of which have been fully operational and the remaining 192 are operated functionally during the 2024 Nataru holiday.

Basuki also said that to support the smooth access to toll roads, his party had increased the availability of 47,000 km of national roads by more than 92 percent. Both in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara, Maluku to Papua.

Basuki also said that the road was blocked by the Regional Road Presidential Instruction which started this year. The center for taking over the road repair process is focused on supporting road access to toll roads.

"For national roads and toll roads, the national road is relatively the same length last year, we just increased the stability of the road," he said.