Jakarta Transit Network
Jakarta Anna Perelman
The city of Jakarta has the most extensive suburban sprawl of any city in the world and an uneven distribution of urban amenities. As a result residents typically travel hours on congested and occasionally flooded roads to access other parts of the city, snarled in massive traffic jams. This travel constitutes a network of extreme delay and supports an enormous informal commercial marketplace that takes place along roadsides. This informal economy is estimated to account for 60% of the city’s economic activity and is at the same time not recognized as legal nor tabulated.
The city has recently developed a series of dedicated high speed busways, the Transjakarta network to alleviate congestion. Its stations are nevertheless the site of extreme and uncoordinated delay, crowding, and the clearing of the informal marketplaces that drive the city and are essential to its character. The project proposes a novel infrastructure for coordinated delay in the form of a new transit station type that incorporates a flexible membrane architecture to modulate the flow of pedestrian traffic, provide opportunities for clustering and lightweight infrastructure for the emergent street market vendors, and ambient services in the form of rain protection, vehicular exhaust ventilation, lighting, and air conditioning.
