The project under Belt and Road links the capital Jakarta with the economic hub of Bandung.

Indonesia has inaugurated its first high-speed railway, a $7.3bn (£5.9) project backed by China under its Belt and Road Initiative.

President Joko Widodo launched the service, which connects the capital Jakarta to Bandung, a top economic hub.

The railway is named Whoosh, a Bahasa Indonesia acronym that translates to time-saving and reliable.

Mr Widodo has prioritised projects like Whoosh to ease the country’s severe traffic jams.

The railway was originally scheduled to open in 2019 but was delayed due to land disputes, the Covid-19 pandemic and a $1.2bn (£984m) budget overrun.

  • @cydEnglish
    6•1 year ago

    The areas around Jakarta and Bandung are not dirt poor backwaters; there are literally millions of middle class Indonesians able to afford such prices, and more every year as the country develops. Also, having high speed rail tickets as low as $16, which the article admits is “comparable” to other options, is already a huge feat!

    This simply sounds like the writer is casting around for any negative views they can find, in order to shape a narrative. You can unearth such grousing about any infrastructure project, no matter how worthy, if you ask enough people.

    • @MicroWaveOPEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      My comment is more to you talking about trains in general, as there are already regular trains in place. This is more about where high-speed rail fits in. AP News also has an article on it:

      “I’m so happy and very excited that finally we can ride a bullet train in Indonesia,” said Christianto Nusatya, a Jakarta resident who joined a public test ride last week. “But still, I would prefer to choose a regular train or car, because Jakarta-Bandung is too short and not worth it to be reached by high-speed train.”

      Deddy Herlambang, executive director of the Jakarta-based NGO Institute for Transportation Studies, said the public does not really need a high-speed train on the Jakarta-Bandung route because there were already many other ways of traveling between the two cities.

      He said the bullet train would have a significant economic impact if it connected Jakarta and Surabaya. However, he was pessimistic that the railway project would make a profit in less than 30 years of operation.

      “The high-speed train cannot replace the old transportation that previously existed,” Herlambang said, “People, of course, will prefer to use far cheaper modes of transportation for short distance trips.”

      https://apnews.com/article/indonesia-southeast-asia-highspeed-railway-e7a53ecbcb077b4403d9232e7b93bcf3