Jakarta governor Joko Widodo has firmly said that the city's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) project would begin this month, Indonesia’s Antara news agency reported.

“I want to make sure that the MRT project will start this month without delay,” the governor said when giving a general lecture at Pelita Harapan University in Karawaci today.

He noted that besides the MRT, the construction of the monorail project will start in May this year.

“We will start the MRT project this month and monorail project next month,” Widodo said.

According to him, the construction of the MRT project will be completed in seven years, but the completion of monorail will be finished sooner, in three years.

Widodo said the proposals to build the MRT came up 24 years ago and monorail was 14 years ago, but the implementation of these two major projects has been postponed several times.

“I have only become the Jakarta governor for a few months, but many parties have asked me about the certainty of these two major projects,” he added.

Although the time for completion of the project will be long, it will be able to overcome the traffic congestion problems in Jakarta.

A reform of public transport is necessary to facilitate as many as two million vehicles which come into Jakarta every day from the buffer areas.

Another way is to raise parking rates so that people will switch to mass transit. “This is one way for the city government to overcome traffic congestion,” he said.

- Bernama