I
I spent a weekend in Jakarta back in the summer. My last visit there was the end of 2019, just before Covid hit.
There’s something different about Jakarta. The traffic feels a lot more bearable. I’ve lived in Jakarta for a few years as a kid, and periodically visit Jakarta and other parts of Indonesia over the years. The traffic, the streets are different.
I asked around and did some digging: since 2016, Jakarta has implemented the odd/even traffic policy. Cars with odd-numbered plates can are allowed on certain roads on odd-numbered dates, and the same for even-numbered plates on even-numbered dates. A back of the envelope calculation suggests traffic congestion might be reduced, which may not be clear in reality. But it’s a start.
There’s also the Car-Free Day. Held every Sunday, from 6am to 11am, an 8-kilometre stretch of road is closed-off to cars but open to people walking, running etc. It’s an enjoyable way to explore metropolitan Jakarta on foot.
There’s also developments on the infrastructure side with public transpor, like the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), and more on the way too.
Other problems with Jakarta aside1, I think these are interesting ways to start solving the issue of road congestion.
II
Car-free days and odd/even traffic rationing aren’t exactly new. They have been tried and tested in other countries. The former though, seems to be used as a campaign thing rather than permanent policies in some parts of the world.
It is, to me, better than just expanding and building more roads to solve congestion. Adding roads acually add to congestion, not reduce it. A phenomenon known as induced traffic.
This phenomenon has been observed by traffic engineers since the 60s, and studied by economists since. All findings seem to indicate that adding more roads adds more cars. A 10% increase in the amounts of roads leads to a 10% increase in cars.
How so? Induced traffic, or more generally, induced demand, follows from the (only) laws of economics: supply and demand.
By adding roads, you increase its supply, reducing the relative costs of driving, which means more people WILL use the roads more often. The initial reduction in congestion caused by expanding these bottlenecks is quashed by the increase of road use and road users.
Extrapolating that logic: even having improved public transportation will end up with the same dilemma. People switching to trains reduces congestion at first, which invites more road use, and now you’re back to square one. Probably worse because the total number of potential road users have increased.
To solve this issue of congestion, which seems to be caught in a vicious loop, policies cannot just look at roads, public transport and drivers. There must be disincentives in place to discourage car use.
III
On solving congestions in cities, two cities in Europe come to mind, Amsterdam and Paris.
In the 1957, the Netherlands had about 31 cars registered per 1000 inhabitants. Soon after, there is a sharp increase in car registration. By 1970, that number had rocketed to 210 cars per 1000 inhabitants. A 7-fold increase. However, the steep growth from the 60s to the 80s had slowed down. As of 2021, per Dutch stats, only 497 cars per 1000 inhabitants.
We know Amsterdam today as this haven for cyclists. But it was not always that way, in the past, it might have been like the busy streets of American cities. It was not just a matter of building infrastructure for cyclists and enforcing bike lanes. As Michael Thomas writes in his piece “How The Netherlands Built a Biking Utopia”:
If you want people to bike you can’t just make it pleasant to bike. You have to make it a pain to drive.
As I wrote in my previous piece, where the Japanese made driving prohibitively expensive with tolls and parking licenses, the Dutch also made parking costly and made roads too narrow for comfortable driving.
Paris too has aggresively reduced cars in its beautiful city. While the movement may have started two decades ago, Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris since being elected in 2015, has invested heavily in bike infrastructure, converting highways into pedestrian zones, and even used the pandemic to repurpose parking and roads for bicycles. Never let a good crisis go to waste!
IV
Reduction in traffic congestion bring about great benefits. The obvious ones being less road accidents, which means more lives and livelihoods saved2. There’s less air pollution too.
Yet despite what we have observed, and the benefits that can be realised… Why are our streets still congested? Why do cars take so much space in our cities and our neighbourhoods?
I’m speaking primarily about my homeland, Malaysia, but I feel it applies to many other parts of the world too. There’s a place and space for cars, sure, but I have to ask: in the first place, who is the city for?
V
The economist Ed Glaeser once said:
I think the city is our greatest invention because it plays to something that is so fundamental in humanity. It plays to our ability to learn from one another. And that ability has evolved over six million years, and it has made us what we are.
I recall my experience in Jakarta and the stories I hear about the traffic. On most days, it’s already hard to get around. During peak traffic, the roads are caught dead in a gridlock that can last for hours. Do we actually want this? No one enjoys being stuck in traffic for hours on end.
But why do we put up with it? Actually, it is worse. We contribute to it. We volunteer and ask for congestion the moment we turn the key to ignition and roll out the car onto the road.
I think back to walking down that stretch of road on Sunday morning in Jakarta.
Free of loud, polluting cars. I am not in a cage on four wheels. I am exposed to the air, but also exposed to people around me.
Being in a car, I feel disconnects you from the space around you, it makes you feel secure but, in truth, reinforces feelings of vulnerability.
Being able to walk the streets freely, breathing the open air, and bumping into other people, I feel more attuned to the world around me, and somehow I can vibe with the other pedestrians, my fellow people. I feel connected with the place and the people.
Does everyone else not want that too?
Alas, being human, we will find other ways to destroy ourselves 🙁