Indonesia and Japan signed an agreement on Tuesday to stipulate a medium-speed train project to attach the Southeast Asian nation’s capital Jakarta with its second-largest city Surabaya.
After two years of negotiations, the 2 countries agreed to make use of the narrow-gauge railway track as a substitute of the usual track to higher adapt to the terrain characteristics within the dense and multi-grid areas of the island of Java.
“When the project is accomplished, Java will turn into (like) a giant city,” Indonesian Minister of Public Works and Housing Basuki Hadimuljono said in a speech after the signing of the deal.
“This is a strategic national project that will significantly improve our rail services,” Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said in one other speech.
The project will double the present speed of the present train from 80-90 km/h to 160 km/h or reduce the journey time by 3.5 hours from 9 to five.5 hours.
Once accomplished, the route will serve 54 flights, each carrying 900 passengers per day, connecting the 2 cities.
The project might be divided into two stages, the primary of which might be carried out between Jakarta and the capital of Central Java Province, Semarang, and the second between Semarang and Surabaya, the capital of East Java Province, covering distances of 436 km and 284 km, respectively.
In an interview with Kyodo News a couple of months ago, President Joko Widodo expected that construction of the railway line would begin next yr.
The Indonesian Agency for Technology Assessment and Application predicts that 12.4 percent of airline passengers between the 2 cities, which numbered about 8 million last yr, will transfer to trains.
Last yr, the federal government made a “political decision” to permit only Indonesian and Japanese corporations to take part in the tender for the development of the railway network.
Indonesia had been leaning towards selecting Japan for the project, apparently to ease Tokyo’s disappointment after losing to China in 2015 in a bid to construct a high-speed railway between Jakarta and Bandung.
From the post office in Bangkok
