Japan supervises Java’s railway project

JAKARTA. The Transportation Ministry’s railway directorate general has assigned Japan Transportation Consultants (JTC) to supervise the construction of 76-kilometer railway double tracks linking Kroya near Cilacap and  Kutoarjo on the southern coast of Central Java under a Rp 185 billion (US$15 million) contract signed on Monday.

The Rp 2.3 trillion railway project, which is part of the 655-km double tracks across the southern coast of Java, has yet to be tendered to contractors but the project is scheduled to be completed in 2017.

The ministry’s secretary-general ,Leon Muhammad, said 184-km of the double tracks linking Kutoarjo and Solo were completed last year while those from Cirebon (West Java) to Kroya, Cirebon to Prupuk (Central Java), and Solo (Central Java) to Madiun (East Java) were still under construction.

Leon said the double tracks would speed up the travel time from Jakarta to Yogyakarta from the current average of eight hours to six.