Government’s Homework on Alternative Public Transportation

It seems that Indonesia isn’t ready yet for advanced tech-based transportation service. Just take a look at what Go-Jek and Uber have to face during the past week. Both services got tackled by the government, the Land Transportation Organization (LTO), and other interested parties (including regular ojek drivers) despite the fact that they’ve sealed people’s heart. This indeed is a homework for above parties, particularly to the extent of preparing themselves for the future.

It’s about a week ago that a news reporting about violent treatment received by Go-Jek drivers from their fellow regular ojek drivers. Economic becomes the main reason, as they believed that their customers now prefer using Go-Jek’s services rather than theirs.

Same thing goes with Uber. Indonesia Club even sued Uber for violating the regulation. This resulted on the capturing of numerous Uber’s drivers. To keep such thing from recurring, below are the homework that the government and LTO must complete.

Service Quality

It’s quite obvious that people prefer Uber and Go-Jek more due to the high quality they offer within their service. With the touch of technology, smartphone in this case, both have made ordering transportation become way easier, not to mention the complete detail of drivers, vehicle, and price they provide.

This is what the government needs to follow. Public transportation must be at least as convenient and secure as those two advanced services. Someone’s got to be aware that people’s shift of preference indicates that something is wrong with the conventional public transportation.

Condition of Units

People don’t care about Uber’s clash with the government. All they care about is that Uber provides easier services and better units. In fact, many people agree with the premise.

“In Indonesia, organizing regular public transportation is still something hard to do. This is what the government and the LTO can learn from. It’s wiser to improve the quality of public transportation rather than clashing with Uber or Go-Jek,” said YLKI’s Tulus Abadi.

Uber is accused of violating the Legislation of the Traffic and Public Transportation Number 22 Year 2009 and the Legislation Number 74 Year 2014 about Public Transportation Provider, for being unincorporated. A couple of times ago, DKI Jakarta’s Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) promised Uber its license as long as it fulfill the government’s requirements.

“It’s not that I dislike Uber Taxi, I’ve asked them to license themselves, asked them questions like where is your office? Where does your tax go? Everything must be clear,” said Ahok, as cited from MetroTVNews.

Basically, DKI Jakarta local government isn’t allergic to alternative transportation service. A couple of times ago, they even planned to invite Go-Jek to be one of TransJakarta’s feeders. It’s something that needs to be optimized.

As Abadi said, it’s wiser for the government to focus on improving the quality of public transportation rather than fighting against alternative transportation services.