Lecture notes on transportation in Jakarta

Reblogged from Changing Transportation Behaviors in Jakarta:

Recently I gave a public lecture at the University of Indonesia. I summarized selected aspects of my ongoing research on transportation, individual and institutional behavior change, and air pollution in Jabodetabek, aka Greater Jakarta. This post provides links to the slideshow from that presentation, in PDF format.

• Versi dalam Bahasa Indonesia: Perubahan Perilaku dan Transportasi di Jabodetabek
• Version in English: 

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Successful bike lanes: More than just paint

Reblogged from Changing Transportation Behaviors in Jakarta:

The recent announcement that North Jakarta plans to develop fifty kilometers of bike lanes is hopeful news indeed. Multitudes of Jakartans have shown their enthusiasm for cycling on Car Free Days and at untold numbers of funbikes; many others depend on cycling to earn their livelihood. Also, among other benefits, bicycling represents a practical way to commute and to run errands that reduces the toxicity of Jakarta’s air and Indonesia’s contribution to global warming.

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Bicycle parking in Jakarta / Parkir sepeda di Jakarta

Sorry! The list now is at: http://changingtransport.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/bicycle-parking-in-jakarta-parkir-sepeda-di-jakarta/

Jakarta needs more people? Jakarta?

Glodok area of Jakarta

Tonight I attended a presentation by a couple of researchers from the World Bank. One of them made the “counterintuitive” assertion that Jakarta’s public transportation required greater density. He then mentioned, among other places, Curitiba, Brazil – the home of Bus Rapid Transit – as a model. When I spoke with him afterward, he again contended that 1) greater density, by itself, would lead to improved public transit in Jakarta and 2) Curitiba was denser.

So what’s wrong here?

Cambodia – Ta Prohm, near Angkor Wat

The noble trees approach. Slender and fair, the herald promises enlightenment.

Soon the trees surround the walls of stone. Is this beneficence or menace?

Southeast Asian toilet signs, No. 4 – Angkor Wat

No trip to Angkor Wat would be complete without visiting the toilet. Sadly, the ruins themselves and our guidebook are bereft of signs indicating where and how the long-lost inhabitants of this ancient and mysterious temple handled their waste. But there’s no lack of signs just a notch to the south, at the clean, well-stocked, and (for ticket-holders) free public toilets.

Cambodia – ‘Floating’ village on the Tonle Sap

[Click on the photos to enlarge them.] The Tonle Sap is a lake-and-river combo. It’s remarkable because it reverses flow seasonally. During the dry season, the lake and a lot of fish flow into the river, but, during the rainy season, the river reverses and flows massively into the lake. The lake goes from large to huge, and some places go from dry to several meters under water. People and other living things have to cope with this change.

Tourists staying at Siem Reap, in addition to gandering at ancient temples such as Angkor Wat, can visit the resulting ‘floating villages’ and flooded forests. We hired a boat that carried us through a channel of submerged trees to one such village, called Kampong  (or Kompong) Phluk.

As you can see, the buildings aren’t floating but are built on stilts. Our experience there would have been incredibly different in the dry season, because these buildings would have loomed high above dry ground, and entering them would have required quite a climb. I recommend that you Google (or whatever) Kampong Phluk to see just how tall they are.

There’s a dog lazing on the platform in front of this house:

The boat on the left is a floating store, making the rounds.

Here’s a school:

Amazingly, there were a couple of enclosures for pigs:

In our short time there, these boys demonstrated a variety of ways to play on the water in metal tubs:

The most impressive sight, for me, was this temple. It sits on solid ground, along with a broadcast tower. It must be resting on a huge pile of dirt; I imagine that people ‘shore it up’ each year when the water recedes.

The village offered tranquil canoe rides through a small nearby forest. All of these would be tall trees during the dry season.

Here’s one of the guides; all of them were women. We guessed that this was one of many ways Cambodians tried to use tourism to increase dignified employment for women.

Not far beyond the flooded forest, the zone of trees and settlement gave way to a vast, open lake. This is the edge:

This short video gives a sense of what the visit was like, including the sounds: