Traffic, glorious traffic

It was bound to come up, so I might as well get it out of the way, even though I'm sure the frustration will get the better of me many more times and you will have to again endure my rants. Everyone warned me about the traffic problem here in Jakarta. At first I hardly ran into it and I foolishly hoped they were just exaggerating. After all, Washington, DC is no picnic. Now that I have been here over 2 months however, I have come across it a few times, and it is indeed bad. The worst traffic episode was due to flooding, and it was when we were moving our stuff into our house. Mercifully C was not in the car with us, as it took us about 2 hours to get from our house back to the hotel, when it should have taken about 25 minutes. And this was at the end of the day, after J had been moving boxes to the house all day and we had spent a couple exhausting hours shopping. This past Friday night we ran into traffic again, and a 10 minute trip took 30. Then again on Sat. when we went shopping. The problems arise unexpectedly and for no apparent reason. J tells me that the population of Jakarta is supposed to grow by 50% over the next 30 years. I don't know how this city could possibly handle that. It is busting at the seams as it is.

Part of the problem stems from the sheer number of people and cars, of course (Jakarta has a population of about 13 million). However, I think the Dutch, the last country to colonize Indonesia (following after the Portuguese, and other influences such as the Indians and Arabs and other SE Asian countries), are also to blame for their idiotic road system. It is one of those designs where if you are on the north side of a main street and want to go south, you have to travel north in order to get to an overpass or roundabout to get to the southbound side of the street. Basically, you can't get across many streets here without first getting to an overpass or roundabout. This causes more cars to have to merge into traffic and get off exit ramps, which leads to more congestion. We have wasted 20 minutes in this situation before, just trying to get to the overpass to go the opposite direction.

Given the bad traffic, low wages and expense of cars, there are millions of motorcycles and scooters on the roads. And they are incredibly brazen. Evidently size doesn't matter to them, because they will dart in front of a bus without a second thought. They also seem to think they have the right of way, because they rarely slow down if the car in front of them slows down for a pedestrian or turning vehicle, etc. I am scared to drive just about anywhere in this city, mainly because I am so afraid of hitting a motorcyclist. They come out of nowhere! And yet despite the millions of cars and motorcycles on the road, the terrible traffic, the audacity of the drivers, and the disregard for lane markers, I have yet to see an accident.

Since we're on the subject of driving and roads, the numbering system for shops and houses is also very frustrating. Even with an address it is very challenging to find your destination. One road can end up having several different names. Evidently a slight curve in a road is enough reason to change the name. The numbers are also not necessarily sequential. A shop with an address number 30 can be next to a shop with a number 50. It is terribly confusing and time consuming to find a destination.

J and I have already suggested that it will likely be the traffic and congestion of this city that will drive us home.