Bandung Update

The West Java capital of Bandung has suffered a second blow to its pride -- and city spatial plan -- with acute traffic jams clogging the city that a few months ago was named Indonesia's dirtiest. If the country needed an enema, Bandung would be the first choice for the point of application.

The serious traffic problem has attracted the attention of Indonesia's Vice President who criticized Bandung saying it had one of the best urban planning education centres in the country at the Bandung Institute of Technology, yet still could not fix its traffic. "It should be noted here that the town planning is not wrong. Its implementation does not run as well as expected. The governor and the mayor do not apply the sciences taught at school," the VP said. the traffic could be seen as a mark of development and economic improvement in the city.

"The traffic jams happen because there are many knocking shops there. Before the opening of the whorehouses, go-go bars and strip joints, the traffic was not so uncontrollable," he said. The VP, enjoying a libation or two at a local “chrome pole salon” said it was regrettable that local officials were unable to manage the traffic.

It was noted that the Indonesian equivalent of Air Force One had managed to block a sizeable amount of the cities arteries after it skidded off the runway during landing.

The number of public and private vehicles, including motorcycles, registered with the Bandung Transportation Office in 2000 was around 457,000. With the number of vehicles in the city rising by an estimated 20 percent each year, traffic jams along Bandung's 1,169 kilometres of potholes are becoming difficult to prevent.

Recent surveys on the cities vehicle population are unable to clearly define current numbers as no-one bothers to register their car or motorbike any more. The arrival of tens of thousands of local tourists, especially from Jakarta on the weekend, only makes the situation worse.

A local trader suggested that it was essential that stopping the sale of the silly woollen hats that the women of Bandung wear would deter Jakartan’s from visiting and ensure that the roads were quiet at the weekends.

Dada Fuckwit, in charge of maintaining the potholes said his feelings were not hurt by the Vice President's comments because his municipality was still in the process of reorganizing the traffic. As to what that process is exactly, no-one questioned seemed to know.

Local police chiefs acknowledge that any improvement in the traffic situation would cause a severe drop in salary for the Traffic Cops as there would be less chance for extorting cash from “offenders”

"This motivates us not to deal with the problem as soon as possible," was the official police response.