Work started Monday on a $600 million monorail system, designed to carry up to 270,000 people a day, which will ease the Indonesian capital's notorious traffic problems. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, at a groundbreaking ceremony for the project, said, "God willing, Jakartans will soon have an alternative transport system which will help them go around to do their activities more easily."
Public transport in the city, which has a population of eight million, consists mainly of buses, many of them old and polluting, and minibuses. The monorail, scheduled to be completed at the end of 2006, comprises a 27-kilometer, or 17-mile, elevated railway divided into two lines called the Green Line and Blue Line.
The Green Line will serve the business districts while the Blue Line will run along Jakarta's outer areas. Jakarta Monorail, the consortium carrying out the project, consists of Indonesia Transit Central and the Omnico Consortium which represents companies from Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.





The Japanese company Hitachi will supply materials and technology needed for the construction, which will create 10,000 jobs, and Singapore MRT will be a partner in the system's operation, said Sukmawaty Syukur, director of Jakarta Monorail. Sutiyoso, the governor of the capital, said the project proved "that Jakarta is still an attractive investment destination in the eyes of foreign investors." He said he was also negotiating with a consortium to build a subway, work on which might start "in not too long a time." If built to completion, this will be Hitachi's largest straddle beam monorail system outside of Japan. At one point it appeared that MTrans of Malaysia would be supplying the system, but Hitachi successfully wrestled the contract from their grasp. The type of monorail used is the "Alweg-type". More information about this type of monorail can be found below.



· Alweg, the original system (external link)

Route of the monorail
The green 'circle' route will be constructed first and will be first used in the second half of 2006. The blue line's construction will start later this year and will be in use in early 2007.