Jakarta Governor Ensures MRT To Begin In April

Tangerang, Banten, April 11 (Antara) - Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo, better known as Jokowi, has ensured that the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) project would begin in April 2013. "I want to make sure that the MRT project will start this month without delay," the governor said when giving a general lecture at Pelita Harapan University in Karawaci on on Thursday. He noted that besides the MRT, the construction of monorail project will also start in May this year. "We will start the MRT project this month and monorail project next month," Jokowi said. According to him, the construction of MRT project will be completed in seven years, but the completion of monorail will be sooner, or in three years. Jokowi said the plan to build MRT came up 24 years ago and monorail was 14 years ago, but the implementation of these two major projects has been postponed for several times. "I have only become the Jakarta governor for a few months, but many parties have asked me about the certainty of these two major projects. Therefore I ensure that the one will start this month and the other will be next month," he added. Although the completion of the project will be long, but it will be able to overcome the traffic congestion problems in Jakarta. A reform of public transport is necessary to facilitate as many as two million vehicles into Jakarta every day from the buffer area. Another way is to raise parking rates so that people will switch to mass transit. "This is a way of the city government to overcome traffic congestion," he said.