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Jakarta officials have announced that services on busway Corridor IX, connecting the city’s east and north, will be extended by an hour as of today to accommodate late-night passengers.

Muhammad Akbar, head of the TransJakarta Management Unit (BLU), said the trial run on the city’s longest route, running from Pinang Ranti in East Jakarta to Pluit in North Jakarta, would last about a month.

The last buses of the day would depart at around 11 p.m. and wrap up their routes an hour later, he said at a media conference on Thursday. The buses usually begin their final leg at around 10 p.m.

Akbar said 12 buses would be made available for the extra hour, six each leaving from the Pluit and Cililitan shelters at either end of Corridor IX.

He said the last buses were expected to arrive at the other end of the line at around midnight.

“We expect to accommodate 700 passengers on the night busway,” he said.

The trial was expected to cost an extra Rp 200 million ($22,800) for the month in overtime pay and overhead, Akbar said, although that would be offset by a projected Rp 70 million in additional fares over the same period.

Udar Pristono, head of the Jakarta Transportation Office, said the trial run had been introduced following requests from passengers to extend the busway’s regular operating hours of 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“This is part of efforts to improve services for passengers because we acknowledge that there are many malls with workers [leaving after 10 p.m.] served by busway Corridor IX,” he said.

The route, which was launched at the end of last year, now serves around 43,000 passengers a day.

Udar said after that the one-month trial period, the BLU would evaluate whether it was necessary to add more buses to or extend it to other routes.

He said the BLU was also considering extending operations at Corridor I for an hour.

Corridor I runs from Blok M in South Jakarta to Kota in North Jakarta and serves 80,000 passengers a day — the most of any busway route.

Wati, 26, a private sector employee who lives in Cawang, East Jakarta, welcomed the extended operating hours.

She said that since the city scrapped regular bus routes running parallel to the corridor last month, her commute home from her office in the Semanggi area had been disrupted.

Wati said she used to take the Patas 6 bus, which ran from Grogol in West Jakarta to Kampung Rambutan in East Jakarta and stayed in operation until past midnight, but it had been one of the routes affected.

“I regularly go home at night, and since the P6 was scrapped, I don’t know what bus to take,” she told the Jakarta Globe.

“I count on my friends to give me a ride or else I take an omprengan ,” she added, referring to unlicensed public minivans . Wati said that with the busway now running later, she could use it to go home at night.

“I hope the late-night busway is reliable because there are many mall workers who need night buses,” she said.

However, not all of the shelters along Corridor IX will get late-night service. Shelters to remain open for the trial are Cililitan/PGC2, Cawang UKI, Cawang Ciliwung, Pancoran Tugu, Kuningan Barat, Jamsostek Gatot Subroto, Semanggi, Slipi Petamburan, Slipi Kemanggisan, Harapan Kita Hospital, Tomang Central Park, Grogol 2, Penjaringan and Pluit.