Ministry Of Transportation Seeks Input On New Normal Rules Of Transportation

Minister of Transportation Budi Karya (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Transportation is preparing a plan to implement new norms in the use of transportation modes. Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi said his ministry was working with a number of universities to seek input and opinions on the plan.

"Ministry collaboration is the key to mitigating the impact of a pandemic in a new life order," Budi said in a video broadcast on the Ministry of Transportation's Youtube account, Tuesday, June 2.

Budi said, the new normality will provide two advantages, namely the application of the COVID-19 prevention protocol which minimizes the transmission of the corona virus and the return of community activities to meet the needs of life and the economy.

"I am optimistic that the new normal order will provide another lesson for the national economy. When COVID-19 can coexist, people can return to their activities outside the home but still try to be safe from the virus," said Budi.

Head of the Transportation Development and Research (R & D) Agency, Umiyatun Hayati, said that the Ministry of Transportation had listened to all input that would be considered in formulating policies in the transportation sector in a new normal situation.

The input came from academics, health experts, transportation operators, and other stakeholders, including from members of the public.

"This meeting will be followed up with a series of discussions and joint research so that in the short term it is expected to provide input on policy evaluation and preparation for new norms," said Hayati.

Vaccines and assistive technology excite transportation

One of the inputs came from the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS) Surabaya. ITS Chancellor Muhammad Ashari predicts that the level of community mobilization using transportation modes will still be sluggish for the next 2 years.

Because, according to him, until now the vaccine has not been found. Thus, it is not certain that the community is immune from COVID-19 and chooses to reduce travel to prevent transmission of COVID-19.

Therefore, the recovery in the productivity of transportation modes will be in line with the prediction of vaccine discoveries that are predicted to occur in 2021.

"As long as there is no vaccine for COVID-19, people are still not immune, so the public traffic demand will decrease. It will come back in about 2 years but it will not be exactly the same as before," said Ashari.

While working to restore the transportation sector, Ashari felt there needed to be an integration between the COVID-19 prevention protocol and technological innovation. This is to facilitate the implementation of new norms in transportation transport.

"For example, a temperature sensor. If the protocol must regulate the temperature of passengers, we can use camera technology, so that we can get the temperature of each person. If this is the standard in our transportation, it will be more flexible," he said.

"Likewise about sterilization, ITS is developing UV that can be installed or portable to be able to sterilize passenger seats," added Ashari.