case study

Case Study

Tokyo, Japan's capital with population over 13 million people, live and commute.

Over four and half million vehicles rush through these streets of Japanese metropolis, daily.

And like any other cities in the world, traffic problems are not unique.

The Metropolitan government tackle vigorously to find spaces and increase traffic lanes. Widening roads, going underground, or even building expressways on top of each other.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government, said, "In order to ease traffic congestion, we have to increase the road capacities. However, to do so we would need large sums of budget and time. We would need to manage road in the meantime."

How did Tokyo increase the capacities?

1. Gate Tower Building is a 16-story office building in Japan. It is notable for the highway that passes through the building.

2. Multi-level roads and express ways

3. Underground expressway planned as a solution to the chronic traffic jams in central Tokyo is the Central Loop Shinjuku Line, part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway system.

What can we learn from Tokyo, Japan to reduce the traffic jam?

1. By building multi-level roads and expressways, as Tokyo did. Presently, Singapore's roads and expressways are only single level for the most part. Just doubling the road level will ease traffic flow by half.Well, some people may argue that multi-level roads and expressways are unsightly. However, this may be mitigated to some extent if properly planned, and besides, adding another level to an already existing expressway would not likely make it much worse.

2. We can also make underground expressway to increase the capacities of the road in Singapore. 


JAKARTA

Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia is one of develop countries that has the same problem with Singapore, which is traffic jam.  Traffic jams are everywhere in Jakarta. It is hard for people in Jakarta and in its suburbs to move around. It takes too long than it should be to get to one place from another.

There are some causes of traffic jam in Jakarta. The first one is too many vehicles on the road. There are many kinds of public transportation and also too many private cars and motorcycles (fig 1.2a.). The second one is indiscipline motorists like bus drivers that likes to stop everywhere they like, motor bikers do not obey the traffic signs and regulation, also most of the bus drivers also drive carelessly (fig.1.2b.).

Figure 1.2a. Too many vehicles that caused traffic jam in Jakarta

Figure 1.2b. Indiscipline bus driver in Jakarta

Beside that, traffic lights in Jakarta are sometimes in malfunction and take long time especially at the intersections, they take too long that they don’t suit the frequency of vehicles and make vehicles pile up.

However, even though Indonesia and Singapore has the same problem, these two countries are different. Unlike Singapore, Indonesia has the absence of long-term infrastructure, such as: MRT system and monorail. Moreover, “Busway” as another alternative to reduce traffic jams in fact also gives a problem to the traffic. Also, there are not enough road and highways in Indonesia.