A train that once did 14 trips a day now does 52. That jump sums up the first six months of the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, which passed the half-year mark on Wednesday with 2.56 million passengers carried, according to its operator, PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China (KCIC). KCIC is a joint venture of Indonesian and Chinese state-owned firms that built the line and runs it.
Commercial service began around mid-October last year. Since then the trains have made 7,050 trips and covered more than 1.26 million kilometers.
Capacity has grown with the schedule. Seats on offer rose from 8,400 to more than 31,000. The busiest single day brought 21,537 passengers, and on the fullest day 99.6 percent of seats were taken. The railway, the first of its kind in Indonesia and in Southeast Asia, had reached 2 million passengers in early March, official data show.
Keeping it running
KCIC said it relied on China’s long experience with high-speed trains to manage operations and maintenance. That included handling heavy rains and typhoons without interrupting service, it said, and keeping passengers safe. To suit riders better, the company brought in a dynamic fare policy, reworked the timetable and upgraded facilities at the stations.
An hour saved, and a habit shifting
The line runs 142.3 km at a design speed of 350 km per hour. A trip from Jakarta to Bandung, in West Java province, used to take more than three hours. It now takes around 40 minutes.
Septian Hario Seto, deputy minister at Indonesia’s Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs, said the railway has changed how people travel between the two cities, moving them off the highway and onto rails. “I am confident that in the future, our mobility pattern will evolve from individual transport to a more mass transport-oriented approach,” he said.
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- Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway marks 6-month operation with…
- Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway marks 6-month… – CGTN
