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

principal contract. The software to run the ticketing system had been designed by a
different sub-contractor to Angelcom SA, a local subsidiary of a French IT company.
Medina Inox hired a former staff member from Angelcom SA who brought with him
some of the technical knowledge necessary to run the system, but not enough to adapt the
system to Jakarta’s different ticketing system needs. Medina Inox is now being sued by
Angelcom on the basis of theft of intellectual property rights.
DisHub procured the contactless ‘smart cards’ from MIFARE, another local partner of
Medina-Inox, again without a competitive bid.
Upon the creation of BP TransJakarta, BP TransJakarta then contracted out for one year
the operation of the ticketing system to a separate company, PT Lestari Abadi after a
competitive bid between four pre-determined candidates, which were evaluated with
TransJakarta’s own evaluation criteria. A full open tender was not held since time was
very limited. PT Lestari Abadi operates as ticket sales and revenue collector operator
only.
DisHub was supposed to transfer the ticketing system equipment to TransJakarta, but
because it never worked well, TransJakarta refused to take ownership of it.
Since the opening of TransJakarta’s Bus Rapid Transit system in January of 2004, the
ticketing system has not worked well. The following problems were the most serious:
o Customers initially faced long delays waiting to purchase tickets and entering the
gate barrier.
o The turnstiles were frequently unable to read the smart cards due to electrical and
mechanical failures.
o The smart cards procured were sub-standard and many of them failed.
o The amount of revenue collected was difficult for TransJakarta to track because
the data was consolidated by DisHub, and this data was incomplete, and not sent
in a secure form to TransJakarta.
o The system was not programmed in a way to handle early morning discounts or
discounts from passengers transferring from feeder buses.
o The system was not installed with proper grounding and power stabilization
equipment.
While many of the problems were technical, they were at root contractual and
institutional problems. Some of the problems encountered could have been avoided had
DisHub signed a better contract with the equipment manufacturer. The contract should
have required the equipment provider to provide ongoing service, and part of the payment
should have been withheld until after the system was operational. The contract should
have included stiff penalties for failure. Nor did the contract guarantee the transfer of the
secret keys necessary to allow a second party to reprogram the system. As a result, when
problems arose, the ticketing equipment supplier tried to get additional resources out of
DisHub before agreeing to fix the problem. We do not know the degree to which the
Final Recommendations for TransJakarta, p. 43