Making TransJakarta a World Class BRT System - ITDP | Institute for ...

prefer a ‘single-seat’ trip where they do not have to transfer, even if bus speeds are
slower, particularly if it costs less. For this reason, in order to ensure that closed BRT
systems have high enough levels of passengers to cover their operating costs, most of
them when they were built changed the existing bus route structure so that many of the
old bus lines now serve as feeders with a free transfer at the bus terminal.
Because the design capacity of TransJakarta is currently very low, (2700 pphpd), and
current demand is nearly at this capacity, it is more important right now to increase the
capacity of corridor I than it is to add feeder bus services. However, once the decision is
taken to make the necessary improvements in the system’s physical design to increase its
capacity, feeder bus services should immediately be added. Until the feeder system is in
place, profitability of the system will continue to be lower than it could be, and traffic
congestion and air pollution in the corridor will continue to be worse than it needs to be.
The contractual relationship between TransJakarta, DisHub, and the feeder bus operators
will be critical to its success and failure, and will depend significantly on the contractual
structure of the trunk line operators.
Historically, in developing countries, feeder bus contracting has only been successfully
been dealt with in two ways. Either the feeder buses serving a given corridor are
operated by the same monopoly concessionaire that is operating the trunk line in the same
corridor as part of the same operating contract, or the feeder bus operator is contracted
out to a separate party directly by the BRT authority (TransMilenio).
Normally this is done by giving a concession contract to a single feeder bus operating
company for a particular feeder region. This company may be the same as one of the
trunk line operating companies if they win the bid, or it may be a different one.
It has been found that the best way to pay feeder bus operators is by using a combination
of both bus kilometers (with the routes somewhat regulated by the authority) and also by
the passenger (so that they have an incentive to find good routes and provide a good
service that attracts passengers).
With feeder services you run into incentive problems by going with a single payment
measure. In Quito, when they had the remuneration based solely on kilometers traveled,
some operators found it more convenient not to pick up passengers. After all, the only
thing that mattered was their odometer reading and the passengers were a headache. It
was the opposite in Leon, where the payment was passenger based, and the feeder
operators duly decided not to service non-peak or afternoon peak periods which had
fewer passengers.
Other options have not been successful. Using informal paratransit vehicles operating
under their own independent authority does not work because the paratransit companies
end up competing for passengers for the trunk line service. Even when these vehicles are
banned on the main trunk line, they will still try to make the long-haul trip on a parallel
Final Recommendations for TransJakarta, p. 41