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Future plans to improve Jakarta’s busway service will see TransJakarta buses traveling against the flow of traffic, officials said on Monday.

Udar Pristono, head of the Jakarta Transportation Office, said having buses go against the flow of traffic would ensure that dedicated busway lanes remained free of other vehicles. This, he said, would enable the buses to maintain a short headway, which is the time between one bus and the next.

The city is studying the contraflow system by assessing the infrastructure and supporting facilities, he said. Officials are also looking at whether people’s driving habits can be changed.

“With this system, we need to consider the geometry of the road intersections as well as the U-turn locations along the busway corridors,” he said.

Udar said the city was not going to rush through the new system before the necessary precautions were taken.

“People would need to be extra careful should they want to cross the roads once we implement this system,” he said.

“We need to finish our studies first. Once they are completed then we can implement the system. We can’t do it with half-baked preparations, that would be dangerous.”

Sr. Comr. Royke Lumowa, chief of the city’s traffic police, said he was confident a contraflow system would succeed in Jakarta, provided some basic steps were taken.

He said under the current system, keeping private vehicles out of busway lanes required police officers standing guard at all hours. “But with the contraflow system,” he said, “busway lanes would be automatically free of private vehicles. This would encourage people to leave their vehicles behind and take the busway.”

The police suggested introducing a contraflow system in February following an accident along busway Corridor VI in Mampang Prapatan, South Jakarta, in which a 9-year-old boy was killed by a TransJakarta bus.

Governor Fauzi Bowo said at the time that his administration had in the past discussed implementing a contraflow system but had decided against it because “we figured motorists in Jakarta had a high level of traffic discipline.”

“On that assumption, we continued with the system where buses go in the same direction as the other traffic, but now it turns out we have to give the other system a try,” Fauzi said.

On Monday, Fauzi said other improvements to the busway would include naming the corridors by their routes instead of numbers.

“So there will no longer be a corridor one, two or three because it is confusing for people. We will change it into Corridor Blok M and so on,” he said.

Fauzi added that the contract for Corridor 1 would expire this year and that the city was ready to open tenders for the buses and the operator. He said all the buses for the route would be articulated, to keep up with the growth in passenger numbers.