Redesign Institutional Capacity: a Case of Bogor City Public Transportation System

Bayu Wirawan (b.wirawan1996@gmail.com)

1. Introduction
As common in developing countries, Indonesia facing rapid urbanization during past three decades (World
Economic Forum, 2015). Data from BPS (Indonesia Central Statistics Bureau) showed that around 53.3 per
cent of Indonesia population nowadays living in urban areas (BPS, 2015a). From administrative perspective,
number of kota1/city raising from 53 in 1990 become 98 by 2010 (Joessair, 2011) and there are also more
than 400 kabupaten (regency) which have one or more small urbanized areas.
With rapid urbanization, along came rapid motorization in Indonesia to serve population movement.
Statistics by BPS (2015b) showed that during 1990-2013, numbers of motorized vehicles increased
significantly, such as passenger cars multiply almost 10 times from 1.3 million to 11.5 million units, while
motorcycles multiply more than 11 times which are from 8.9 million to 104.1 million units. Motorization
high growth happened because of Indonesia high economic growth, low fuel fare 2 and insufficient public
transport service (Purwanto, 2014) combined with no rules on vehicle age restriction. This condition aligned
with only 0.1 per cent road development growth per year (Susantono, 2013) become a significant role for
road congestion in almost all major cities in Indonesia, especially during peak hour.
To reduce traffic congestion issue, better public transportation development became the one most important
aspect to consider. Traffic and Road Transport Act No. 22/2009 mandated Indonesia Government to taking
care for development on reliable and affordable public land transportation. Based on this Act, since 2004,
Ministry of Transportation worked together with local city authority, prioritizing on the urban public
transportation improvement through Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in all Indonesias major cities
(Directorate Land Transport, 2014).
After more than 10 years, development of BRT in Indonesia major cities still facing with problems and
hindrances. The top-down planning and replicating models combined with non-continuous finance
support, bad operational management and no integration with already exist paratransit/conventional system
makes BRT in many major cities still not giving its best performance to shift private motorization to public
transport. Different aspiration, needs and hopes among stakeholders cannot embodied in BRT institution.
This condition resulted in a complex situation that inhibits the BRT planning process continuation. So in
here I would like to propose to designing on better institution to overcome this situation, whereas new
institution is not just changing the organization, but as elucidated by Hudalah (2007) also can be defined as
restructuring formal and informal rules, cultures, procedure and others social structures that compel and
bring through stakeholder decision and action. It is important to understand how each actor behaves in their
own rationality towards better public transportation system, and with suggestion for better institution
design in which could adopt with local cultures or rules, hopefully it can give more benefit for planning and
implementation of BRT system.
In this essay, I would like to analyse on what happened in the BRT development by using Bogor City case.
This essay constructed in several section, first about introduction which mainly explained why Indonesia
need to develop BRT in its major cities. Next section about the condition on public transportation system
development in case study area, which is Bogor City. In the section afterwards is about my suggestion which
combined with theoretical perspectives on how to improve Bogor public transport system.

2. Bogor City Public Transportation System

Bogor is one of main satellite city in Jakarta Metropolitan Region. Located 60 km in south Jakarta City (the
capital of Indonesia), supported by good commuting access and better micro climate makes Bogor became a
favourable place for dormitory city to many Jakarta workers (Tohjiwo, et al., 2010). The total area of Bogor
is about 118.5 km2, consisting of 6 kecamatan (sub-district) with total population of 1,030,720 people (BPS
Kota Bogor, 2015). Bogor high population also resulted in high private car ownership which increase about
13 per cent per year, meanwhile development on road infrastructure is only 0.01 per cent per year, therefore
caused imminent impact on congestion, in which supported by decreasing of average travel speed from 20.7
kph in 2006 and became 9.58 kph by 2013 (Arya, 2014).
The city public transportation service is rely heavily on
angkot. Angkot (from abbreviate angkutan kota or city
transportation) basically is a paratransit, a public
transportation with fixed route but without fixed schedule
and headway, minibus type of car which has 10-12
passenger capacity (see figure 1) (Juwono and Kubota,
2005). This angkot owned and operated by individual
operator and licenced by local authority in this case Dinas
Perhubungan (City Transport Agency). Combine with
others angkot that connecting to outer Bogor City, in
estimation about 8000 angkot operated daily on 33 routes
with average length is about 10 km for each route (BPS
Kota Bogor, 2013). All routes basically connected city
fringe area and ended in single city centre, therefore many
routes are overlapping with each others. Without fixed Figure 1. Angkot in Bogor
schedule and headway, it is a common view for multiple Source: Satya, 2015
angkot waiting for passenger in roadside and combined
with their bad driving habit become the major contributor to the congestion (Kosasih, 2015). Angkot
organized through cooperative type institutions, and the organizations main function is to maintain
relationships with authorities (such as local transportation agency and police force) and mediator when
accidents and/or traffic violation occurred in the routes (Syabri et al, 2013).
To remedy this situation, on 2006 Ministry of Transportation
cooperated with Bogor City government implementing
mini/lite BRT system called Trans Pakuan. Trans Pakuan
called mini BRT because it only passed 1 from 5 essential
elements3 of BRT (ITDP, 2013), it was the elevated platform.
The chosen vehicles are using 11 meter long medium size bus
with capacity of 26-30 passengers, it was almost 3 times
capacity of angkot with only doubled the size (average length
of angkot were 5.25 meter). With its bigger size and capacity,
it was presumed that each Trans Pakuan bus can replaced
three angkot thus would cut at least 50-60 per cent the
number of angkot operated in city centre (Arya, 2015), and
introducing better and efficient public transportation system
in Bogor City.
Figure 2. Trans Pakuan Bogor
Picture: Dwi, 2015 The initial scheme was Ministry of Transportation provided 30
medium size bus while Bogor City developed bus shelters and
created by Perusahaan Daerah Jasa Transportasi/PDJT (Bogor city owned enterprise) to managed daily
operation. In average, by 2008 Trans Pakuan served 2200 passengers per day and by 2012 it served 4200
passengers per day (Palupiningtyas, 2013) and until 2014 there are already 3 routes served by Trans Pakuan
(Arya, 2014). To create better sustainable urban transportation, in future, Bogor City Major planned to add
4 more Trans Pakuan routes and replace angkot with Trans Pakuan (which has overlapping route) or utilize
angkot as Trans Pakuan feeder (Arya, 2014).
After operating almost 10 years, Trans Pakuan still facing a serious problems. These problem such as:
Insufficient funds for maintenance and operation. With it low fare (0.3 per trip), Trans Pakuan
did not get enough sufficient funds for its daily maintenance and operation and new bus
procurement, therefore at 2013 only 18 bus that still operable (Prayudyanto, 2013), and in the
middle of 2015 PDJT needs subsidized from Bogor City Council to avoid bankruptcy.
Shelters management. There is some disappointment about quality of existing Trans Pakuan
shelters which became worst and worst. PDJT claimed that shelters maintenance never became
their responsibility, but it was Bogor Transportation Agency (Zaenudin, 2015).
Refusal of angkot replacement. With Trans Pakuan finance condition as mention above, many
angkot owners refused to substitute their angkot to Trans Pakuan bus because without profitability
opportunity this option is ridiculous (Abdul, 2015).
No direct connection with railway transportation. Current Trans Pakuan routes only connecting
residential clusters with the central bus station, but not to any train station in Bogor. BPS Kota
Bogor (2014) data showed that in average there were more than 47.000 commuters per day whom
 commute to Jakarta using train from Bogor Central Station. Although PDJT planned to develop
route 4 that had a layover on Bogor Central Station, this plan still could not be implemented due to
PDJT insufficient funds.
Problems above showed that there are many gaps in the Bogor City BRT planning process that causing the
crumbled service of the Trans Pakuan. Collaboration among the stakeholders (central government, local
government, angkot owner, PDJT) was not sufficiently constructed, and although there was an organization
(PDJT) to manage, it was not supported enough by better institution.

3. Theoritical Background in Enhancing Actors Involvement

Top-down planning mechanism for Bogor BRT system showed that without proper coordination between
national and local government, accompanied without preparation of good institution design in the end
resulted in condition that unforeseen in the early stage of planning process. As Brand and Gaffikin (2007)
stated, planning is not just about technical aspect, but also understanding the non-technical. It is ultimately
necessary that during planning process, all involved stakeholder must grasp a good understanding of any
impact that might occur and those who focus for innovation and opportunity will get a better prospect to
gain more in the arising situation and able to minimizing the negative impact (Haley 2003).
For planning process that involving multi stakeholders, the plan must also understand that there were
different hope and needs between those stakeholders. While higher hierarchy actor looking for long term
result in a policy, Innes (1996) already reminded that local actors usually only looked for the short term yield
and unaware with long-term implication of a planning process. This condition in the time will resulted in
conflicts and contradictions among all stakeholder. Raised Conflict and contradictions could become an
opportunity for each stakeholder to reflect what have been wrong in their implementation so they realise
that communicating with each other and evolve to different processes (Healey, 1997) is what they need.
Not just the communication among all stakeholders, planning process for a new public transportation
system in a city also must accompany with the choice of institution design that able to support the plan.
Planner in one point must able to devising a good and/or proper institutional design to accommodate all
problems that may arise (Alexander, 2001), but in the other hand planners also must humble and have
volition to use flexibility when uncertain situation arise and not just hold in only available tools that they
understand (Byrne, 2003).

4. Redesigning Bogor BRT Institution

There are several stakeholders that involved public transport planning in Bogor City that planners must
understand. At vertical level, there is Ministry of Transportation and Bogor City Government. At horizontal
level, there are Bogor Transportation Agency, angkot owners and operators, PDJT, city representatives, and
citizens. Each of them certainly has different knowledge, agendas, hopes and aspirations towards what the
impact from implementation of BRT.
New institution in Bogor BRT is about changing the perspectives of all embroiled stakeholders. First, all
stakeholder must understand each own ability to adopt the system. Example in section 2 showed that if all
stakeholders already perceived the consequences of the adoption on the BRT system, they also can come up
and ready with contingency planning when the problems raising. Ministry of Transportation must
understand that implementing new system need lots of financing, so they have to come up with better
strategy or criteria for selecting prospective local government. At the local level, all actor also must
understand that a public transport system is not just for short-term period, but its for long-term period until
something new come up to replace it. Local government and local city council must understand that public
transportation is not just about a monument or physical project, but it is about changing the behaviour of
urban mobility towards better sustainable urban transport so they have to prepare with subsidized scheme
when the need is arise (Prayudyanto, et al., 2013). Local transportation agency must realize that their
function is about regulatory and monitoring and willing to turn over the transportation infrastructure
maintenance and operationalization implementation to other and more qualified actors (GIZ, 2011), and
become mediator to other actors in discussion process so all stakeholders can understand what the
development direction will move forward to. Accommodating existing operator sustainability is also the
major thing that need to put forward. Government, as agent of planning must give transparent and equal
information and goals. The designing of more adaptive institution must answer angkot owner worries about
continuity of the new institution. Government must assure angkot owners that government will always give
their full support toward BRT operation and management, thus guaranteed well-being of angkot owners.
Angkot owners also must realize, existing institution of angkot is not an efficient institution, and willing to
accept the change and formed a better institution.
Second, redesigning existed institution into better institution which can accommodated the relationship
among the stakeholders. Redesigning new institution is not an instant chores, but need to done in several
steps, and my suggestion of these steps:
a) Communicating to all stakeholders that implementation of public transportation system is not a
short-term process, but it is about the long-term process and all stakeholders must support this
because the benefit of the BRT system for Bogor City would be greater in the long-term.
b) Creating an extensive stakeholder network mapping. With this network mapping, all stakeholder
able to understand what their role and function in the project and thus creating a consensus among
all stakeholders.
c) Strengthening the BRT organization with more authority to expand their programs through a better
legal base framework and assurance of financial support of government (local and national) and a
better rule of conduct. Not just transportation operator, but BRT organization should have their
own authority to manage necessary infrastructure, such as shelters, workshop and garage, and
vehicle procurement. A solid guarantee from government for the long-term, thus will attract more
of investors (especially local investor or angkot owner) to invest in this scheme.
d) Merging angkot organization into BRT organization. This phased is an effort to change or to
enhance the informal paratransit to the more formal transit system. This merging also followed by
Gradually Changing angkot system from competing to support BRT. The change can implemented
in two major strategies, first is changing angkot vehicles to BRT vehicles, and second changing
angkot routes as a feeder for BRT. The BRT have obligation to absorb all angkot driver, retrained
them and enhanced their capabilities. The feeder system also greatly increases coverage service
area of the city public transportation system.

5. Conclusion
Implementation of BRT system is not just about transplanting an already given plan in many places with the
same treatment. It is more about understanding the dynamics of the local institution that already existed.
Designing new institution must begin with coordination among all local stakeholder and understanding
about their visions and requisites. In Bogor BRT system case, creation of coalition and consensus among the
stakeholders, such as government bodies, BRT operator, existed public transportation operator, was very
important. Later on, after all the stakeholders gaining the consensus, they will need better rule of the game
to implementing the BRT system, in this stage, the plan must adapt and change their role so it could voyage
through the uncertainty to shaping new and/or better institution that able to facilitating the BRT system
implementation in Bogor City.

Notes
1
There are two kinds of local/district administrative level in Indonesia, which are cities (kota) for urbanized
district area and regency (kabupaten) for rural district area.
2
Latest fuel price is about 0.45 (with exchange rate of IDR 15000 for each 1) per liter by October 2015,
and that is the highest price ever reach in Indonesia.
3
5 (five) essential elements determined to achieved the R (rapid) in BRT, consist of: (1) busway alignment,
(2) dedicated right of way, (3) off-board fare collection, (4) intersection treatments, and (5) platform-level
boarding.

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