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Long before Jakarta’s streets were jammed with cars, the train had its glory days serving commuters into and out of the capital and across Java. There are around 600 historic railway stations in Java and Sumatra, all built by the colonial Dutch East India Company (VOC) administration in the 19th century. Most of them are not well preserved.

In a recent lecture titled “The Great Train Story,” delivered as part of the Indonesian Heritage Society’s Fall 2011 lecture series, railway restoration expert Ella Ubaidi outlined her vision for reviving Indonesia’s colonial-era stations.

Ella is the executive vice president of the Center for the Preservation of Historic Artifacts (UPPBB), a unit formed in April 2009 under the new management of state railway operator Kereta Api Indonesia.

Over the past two years, UPPBB has revitalized 20 train stations across the country, including the Senen and Jatinegara stations in Central and East Jakarta, and has started work on the Lawang Sewu station in Semarang and the iconic Tugu station in Yogyakarta. Aside from renovating the buildings, old steam engines and wooden carriages have also received a makeover.

Ella said the restoration efforts were intended to boost the image of KAI. For many years, the state railway operator has suffered from a poor reputation due to lax maintenance of railway stations and lines.

“I never used to take the train to commute,” Ella said. “The stations were always dirty, even buying a ticket seemed like a lot of hassle.”

Ella hopes better train stations will boost economic development. She gives the example of Grand Central Terminal in New York City, which still operates as a train station, but has also been renovated to include up-market restaurants and boutiques, while preserving the historic building itself.

Ella said that because KAI has never added any stations to the existing rail network left by the Dutch, all of the stations were considered heritage buildings and were protected by law, even though some have already been abandoned due to their state of disrepair. By law, the buildings cannot be destroyed, but they can be restored.

Ella said the conservation approach for each station was different, depending on the condition of the building. During her studies of historic preservation at the University of Southern California, Ella learned that there are two ways to preserve historic buildings. The first is to preserve the building by documenting its features, such as by taking photographs and videos, and the second is by expansion.

The Louvre Museum in Paris is one example of preserving by expanding.

“It’s very adaptive because we expand according to our needs, but we still get to see the building,” Ella said.

The important thing in preservation, she added, is to see heritage buildings not only as cultural resources, but also as a part of our daily lives. In Semarang, the Lawang Sewu (Thousand Doors) station is one such iconic structure undergoing restoration. Once the central office for the first Dutch railway company, the aging building is undergoing a makeover to become a handicrafts center, shopping arcade and museum.

The Ambarawa train museum in Central Java, located in a building dating to 1873, has also caught the eye of the UPPBB.

Ella believes that Indonesia’s historic railways deserve more attention. While commuters still use Java’s railway lines daily, Ella said the Jakarta Commuter Line, which runs from Kota to Bogor and Bekasi, was in urgent need of expansion.

“The Dutch prepared for a busy Batavia city, that’s why they installed the commuter line,” she said.

But the Dutch could not have anticipated the size of the city’s population today, with official figures at more than 10 million people. Ella said the existing commuter line could no longer serve the needs of Jakarta’s citizens because it did not cover the entire city.

“If you live in West Jakarta, for example, there is no way you can commute by train,” she said.

Ella is a strong believer that the city needs a monorail or a mass rapid transit system. After the failure of a monorail project, Jakarta is now looking at the possibility of building an MRT system. MRT Jakarta, a city-owned company promoting the project, is reported to be opening the tender process next month. The estimated cost of the project is around Rp 15.5 trillion ($1.75 billion).

“Nothing will work if there is no goodwill from our politicians,” Ella said.

The new system will also have to be built considering other forms of transportation, she said, like motorbikes, cars and buses. “Four-wheeled vehicles should be given the highways and underpasses,” Ella said, otherwise they will only get stuck waiting for trains to pass.

But before that can happen, the go-ahead must come from the Ministry of Transportation.

The challenge, she said, is for the government to create a grand design for public transportation, incorporating heritage buildings, which are critical to attracting tourism.

“Instead of being angry about it, I figure that we should take action,” she said.