Door open to abandoned monorail project revival

JAKARTA. The Jakarta Development Planning Board (Bappeda) chairwoman Sarwo Handayani said on Sunday that the board were still open to the resurrection of the abandoned monorail project. Currently being revived by state-owned construction firm PT Adhi Karya, the project must be funded by private investors and approved by the city administration.

She said that if State-Owned Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan, who already approved the revival of the project, talked to Governor Fauzi Bowo and the governor approved the plan, then the board might study the monorail project again and compare the feasibility of the project with an elevated bus rapid transit (BRT) system.

At the moment, however, Bappeda will proceed with the plan to use the abandoned concrete columns of the monorail for an elevated BRT system, more suitable for conditions pertaining in the city, according to Sarwo.

“We studied both options with the assumption that they would be funded and run by the government,” she said. “If private investors are included in the scenario, we will have to conduct another study.”

PT Jakarta Monorail, the monorail project’s developer, failed to find investors for the costly project and halted construction in 2008. The project was scrapped last year.

Adhi Karya itself deliberately left out private investors from the picture, saying that the scheme for the monorail business would be to form a consortium of state companies and another of state banks and the city administration.

As for the elevated BRT project, the board and city transportation agency have entered the final planning stage, changing the design of the columns to suit the project, according to Sarwo.

The agency previously said that existing columns would need reinforcement with a concrete layer to enlarge them from the current dimensions of 120 by 160 centimeters to 160 by 200 centimeters.

While Sarwo did not rule out the monorail project, she said that there were some factors that made a monorail system less feasible than the elevated BRT, such as land availability, investment and operational costs.

“Operating a monorail needs a huge amount of subsidy. Not to mention that we don’t have the land for it,” she said.

The proposed monorail, called Jakarta Link Transportation, would need Rp 3.7 trillion (US$390 million) to develop: 30 percent would come from Adhi Karya’s internal cash and the remainder from bank credits, according to the company’s president director, Kiswodarmawan.

For comparison, city officials said that the elevated BRT project would need at least Rp 1.18 trillion, with Rp 962 billion on construction of the elevated lane. Bus procurement and support facilities, like ticketing and depots would cost Rp 200 billion and Rp 25 billion respectively. (The Jakarta Post)