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Alda shakes her head in disbelief after hearing the announcement blare from the loudspeaker at the Pondok Ranji railway station in Bintaro, South Jakarta, one recent morning.

“We’re sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the express train. The 9:50 departure is canceled.”

It’s 10:30 already, and Alda is now wondering how she is going to get to her office on Jalan Sudirman, Central Jakarta, from the Bintaro suburb were she lives. She’s already late for work. “I wish they had told us sooner instead of letting us wait for an hour and then telling us there is no train,” she says in frustration.

Moments later, the 23-year-old, a promotions executive at a record company, hails a taxi and resigns herself to the traffic her driver will fight all the way to the city center.

“I have lost time and money because of the cancellation,” she says, “and this is not the first time they’ve done that.”

Even more frustrating is that she has few other choices. To Alda, commuter trains, which cost between Rp 4,500 (48 cents) and
Rp 8,000 rupiah, are practically the only way she can get into Jakarta without busting her bank account.

A one-way taxi ride to the Sudirman area, she says, can set her back around Rp 50,000 on a quiet day, and about Rp 70,000 when traffic is at its peak. She could take the bus, which is much cheaper, but that means enduring rock-hard seats, noisy vendors selling everything from sandals to Band-Aids, buskers and the reek of her fellow passengers.

“But you know, time is money,” she says, “and I often have to take a taxi or buses when the train is late or canceled.”

According to a study by the Indonesian Transportation Society, a vehicle — car, taxi, bus — traveling in Jakarta on a single trip will spend 60 percent of its time stopped because of traffic. With statistics like that, commuter trains seem a promising way to save time and money, as well as help alleviate Greater Jakarta’s famous traffic gridlock.

So why isn’t everybody, especially suburban dwellers in places like Bogor, Bekasi and Serpong, riding the train?

Bambang Susantono, chairman of the Indonesian Transportation Society, provides a sobering answer: commuter trains alone aren’t enough to solve the city’s growing traffic problems because there’s still a “missing link” with other modes of transportation.

“The key is to integrate all the systems” Bambang said, adding that train passengers should be able to transfer onto a TransJakarta bus without first having to walk several kilometers and then line up to buy another ticket. “The simplest thing to do is apply a one-ticket policy for both the busway and the train,” he said, as well as having at least one transit station that connects the busway and commuter trains.

The Jakarta administration hopes the city will have such an integrated transportation system by 2016 that connects TransJakarta busway shelters and commuter train stations to those of the (hopefully) forthcoming Mass Rapid Transit system and inner-city monorail.

“That way, when suburban people get into the city, they can easily transfer to other transportation modes that [get them] closer to their offices,” he said.

One might forgive suburban commuters for being skeptical, given the inefficiency, discomfort and lack of safety to which they are presently subjected.

Runi, a 24-year-old public affairs consultant who lives in Ciputat, just south of Jakarta, has taken commuter trains several times into Central Jakarta’s Manggarai station. Not once has she had a comfortable trip.

“They should add more trains,” she said, “because at certain times, the train is too full, making it uncomfortable to ride in.”

If PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek (PT KCJ), which operates the commuter trains, doesn’t lift its game, Runi said, not many people will leave their cars and motorcycles at home.

“They lack promotion,” she said of the operator. “Most of my friends perceive the train as dangerous and not at all comfortable.”

They also lack infrastructure, according to Milatia Kusuma, country director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, a UN-supported organization that focuses on city transportation issues.

“Railway development has been neglected by the central government. They choose to build roads instead,” she said, which only encourages people to buy motorcycles and cars despite commuter trains being faster.

Milatia also said the railway network has been shrinking for decades. According to data from the Ministry of Transportation’s directorate general of train services, only about 30 percent of Indonesia’s 6,800 kilometers of railway tracks are currently in use.

Only in the last year has the central government begun a makeover of the railway sector. In 2008, the Ministry of Transportation allocated Rp 19.5 trillion for a train revival program, which is scheduled to be finished next year. The program includes clearing land and illegal squatter settlements along railway tracks, as well as reopening inactive lines and stations.

In September, Transportation Minister Jusman Syafii Djamal cut the ribbon at the new Jurang Mangu station in Bintaro, which serves the track linking Serpong, Banten, with Tanah Abang in the city center.

Such tangible results may yet give hope to people like Laksmi Puput, a 25-year-old auditor at a public accountant’s office in the Jalan Thamrin area, who often works late into the evening before returning home to Depok.

“The train schedule sometimes doesn’t fit with mine,” she said, “so it’s often useless [to use it] since I have to take a bus anyway.”

It’s also more of a hassle to get home at night. An air-conditioned bus service drops her off only a few hundred meters from her house, but from the closest train station she has to get on a minivan to get home.

“That costs me an extra Rp 2,000,” Puput said. A train ride home to Depok sets her back up to Rp 11,000 depending on the hour, while a one-way air-conditioned bus trip costs around half that much.

Then of course there’s Greater Jakarta’s teeming masses, who can neither afford an air-conditioned bus, let alone the Express Train — and have been known to throw rocks at them as they rush by their stations. For between Rp 1,000 and Rp 2,000 per trip, passengers must be prepared to become human suitcases.

They are crammed into cars among hundreds of other passengers, along with boxes, bags and, occasionally, stacks of vegetables and live poultry.

Alda, the record company executive, is occasionally forced to take an economy-class train if there isn’t an Express Train. “It is the worst,” she said. “You have to struggle just to get inside the train.”

With Jakarta’s ranks swelling each workday from 8.5 million to as many as 12 million, PT KCJ obviously has its work cut out for it. The company was only established in the past year by state-owned railway operator PT Kereta Api, with the sole mission of carrying more people living outside Jakarta in and out of the city each day.

The current service links Serpong, Tangerang, Bogor, Depok and Bekasi to five train stations in Jakarta: Palmerah, Karet, Tanah Abang, Sudirman and Manggarai. The 150 kilometers of track also include a circular line within the city, stopping at Jatinegara, Manggarai, Tanah Abang, Sudirman, Pasar Senen and Kampung Ambon stations.

Makmur Syaheran, the company’s corporate secretary, said PT KCJ was gradually adding more Express Trains while at the same time adding more air-conditioned cars onto economy-class trains.

“We are committed to allocate Rp 1.2 trillion by 2013 to improve our facilities,” Makmur said.

Despite the horror stories, more people are using commuter trains than ever before — likely out of necessity because despite all of its problems, it still beats sitting in the increasingly bad traffic. A trip to Bogor by car can take up to two hours, Makmur said, but a commuter train will have you there in 30 minutes.

He said that approximately 400,000 people now use the train daily, an increase from 325,000 in 2008. He said PT KCJ was targeting one million passengers a day by 2013. However, greater capacity won’t necessarily attract more passengers if safety measures aren’t improved.

Riders Runi, Puput and Alda all said they were haunted by the fear of an accident every time they boarded an PT KCJ train.
In August, two commuter trains on the same track between Jakarta and Bogor crashed in Bogor’s Tanah Sereal subdistrict, killing one engineer who was on board. At least 38 passengers were injured in the accident.

Last June, a Jakarta-bound economy-class train from Depok collided with a Depok Express Train near Manggarai station in South Jakarta, injuring three people. The accident paralyzed the entire commuter train system for the rest of the day because Manggarai, one of the biggest hubs, was shut down.

Just days after the accident, Tundjung Inderawan, director general of railway transportation at the Ministry of Transportation, paid a surprise visit to a train maintenance center in Depok and, not surprisingly, found many trains weren’t regularly maintained.

“For passengers, it is like pulling a cat from a sack whenever they get on one of those trains,” Tundjung said at the time, using the colorful Indonesian phrase to describe having to face the luck of the draw.

But the ministry has taken no further action since that inspection.

Bambang, from the Indonesian Transportation Society, said revamping the commuter train system must not stop at adding more trains and stations writing new regulations.

“There has to be a social engineering,” Bambang said, “so people will learn about ethics on public transportation.” Those ethics, he said, include how to queue in front of ticket booths and stopping buses and taxis at the proper places. “If the system is properly integrated, it’s almost certain that people will turn to public transportation,” Bambang said.

Riding on a commuter train bound for Depok, Puput, the auditor, jumps after hearing a loud bang right behind her head. It was most likely a rock being thrown at the train by people along the railway track.

“I hope people will finally understand that public transportation is there to make our lives easier,” she said, shaking her head, “so they will not make any attempts to damage it.”