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Indonesia Begins Yet Another Crack Down on Train ‘Surfers’
January 17, 2012

Rail ticket holders climb aboard a train in Depok. (Antara Photo/File) Rail ticket holders climb aboard a train in Depok. (Antara Photo/File)
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dexxa
1:09pm Jan 19, 2012

nmvcastro and Serigala, the railway company already tried that many times, trains were told not to leave if people still getting on the roof. You know what happened? Those people got angry, created chaos at the station and threatened the train captain. Death might be the only thing that could prevent those people to climb on the train roof.


nmvcastro
10:14am Jan 18, 2012

Why can't they just insist on telling the public that the train won't leave as long as there are people above. If the passengers complain, let them complain to the actual cause of delay of their trip.

Let's see how they start going down one by one.

My God, you can put up those dangerous balls up there but don't have the same balls to implement the rules?

Grow some.

facepalm
7:48pm Jan 17, 2012

Does Mateta Rizahulhaq realise that this is murder he is committing? As soon as the first casualty hits the tracks there will be hell to pay from international human rights organisations. This is lunacy on a homicidal level. Shame on you Indonesia.


Serigala
4:15pm Jan 17, 2012

Expect them to be stolen under cover of the first darkness.

I suppose not allowing the train to leave the station while people are sitting on the roof is too complicated to consider?

Jeanne Hachette
4:04pm Jan 17, 2012

The crows will be very fat in Jakarta with all this dead meat on the rail tracks

Indonesia has gone to imaginative extremes to try to stop commuters from riding the roofs of trains — hosing them down with red paint, appealing for help from religious leaders, and threatening them with dogs.

Now they have an intimidating and possibly even deadly new tactic: Suspending rows of grapefruit-sized concrete balls above railway lines a few centimeters above the tops of carriages at points where trains enter or pull out of stations, or where they go through crossings.

Authorities hope the balls — which could deliver serious blows to the head — will be enough to deter defiant roof riders.

“We’ve tried just about everything, even putting rolls of barbed wire on the roof, but nothing seems to work,” said Mateta Rizahulhaq, a spokesman for the state-owned railway company Kereta Api. “Maybe this will do it.”

Trains that crisscross Indonesia on poorly maintained tracks left behind by Dutch colonizers six decades ago usually are packed with passengers, especially during the rush hour.

Hundreds seeking to escape the overcrowded carriages clamor to the top. Some ride high to avoid paying for a ticket. Others do so because — despite the dangers, with dozens killed or injured every year — “rail surfing” is fun.

The first balls were being installed Tuesday hundreds of yards (meters) from the entrance of a train station just outside the capital, Jakarta, and others were to be placed near railway crossings.

If successful, the project will be expanded, said Rizahulhaq.

Asked about worries that the balls could hurt or even kill those who defy the roof-riding ban, he insisted that wasn’t really his problem.

“They don’t have to sit on top,” he said. “And we’ve already told them, if the train is full, go to the office. We will be happy to reimburse their tickets.”