By Agnes Winarti
Published in Bali Daily/The Jakarta Post Saturday, August 11 2012
The buses on the new 54-kilometer round-trip Trans Sarbagita route from Denpasar to Jimbaran officially hit the roads on Friday and officials quickly found the need to address the various first-day flaws.At one instance, the Sarbagita bus had to stop for a while at one of the bus stops inside the Udayana University compound in Jimbaran, while a worker — instructed by personnel from the local transportation agency — jumped onto the bus roof and used a string to tie up the entangled electricity and telecommunication cables just a few inches from the bus roof.
“Small things like these are often overlooked. We passengers could all get electrocuted by those cables,” said 69-year-old Sarbagita enthusiast and former private bank employee, Made Wirta, who was among the very few passengers who took the time to try out the newly opened route on Friday. A single journey from Denpasar to Jimbaran takes around 1.5 hours.
Believing that Sarbagita, the island’s integrated transportation system, would be one of the solutions to the worsening traffic in southern Bali, Wirta also highlighted the importance of equipping bus conductors with route maps to be distributed to passengers.
”The map is a very useful source of information for passengers. It should be distributed on the bus, as well as in other locations, like at Ngurah Rai [International] Airport,” said Wirta, after a passenger had to argue with one of the Sarbagita-Bali transportation agency members of staff to successfully get a copy of the route map as there were apparently only limited numbers available.
Indeed, the devil is in the details, and many details had not been carefully considered on the first day of operations.
One problem was the rows of private vehicles and small public transport vans, locally known as bemo, parked carelessly along and near the Sarbagita bus stops, especially at the Sanglah hospital stop and Jl. Surapati.
“I can’t find the bus stop. Where is it? These parked vehicles are stopping my bus from getting closer to the bus stop,” complained driver Made Sudana.
A member of staff from Bali transportation agency stepped out from the stop and waved Sudana on to continue the journey, while his passenger had to get off the bus right by the side of the road rather than safely at a bus stop.
For a Rp 2.1 billion (US$222,600) project funded by the provincial annual budget, it was also quite disappointing to find that a mere temporary staircase had been placed at the side of the road to take the place of a bus stop.
Meanwhile, although 2 kilometers is considered the ideal maximum distance between two bus stops, at the moment, there are stops that are up to 5 km away from each other, for example, between Sanglah and Pesanggaran stops in Sesetan area.
According to the plan, Jl. Diponegoro, also known as the Sesetan area, will be serviced by public minibuses that operate four different routes.
The Denpasar transportation agency has promised to start operating those so-called feeder buses by September.
Currently feeder buses connecting GWK to Tanjung Benoa and Uluwatu are already available. However, they are stationed at the entrance gate to the park, while the Sarbagita bus route ends at a bus stop inside the park, about 1 km from the entrance.
Head of Trans Sarbagita operations, Ida Bagus Parsa, acknowledged that they were currently still holding discussions with the Badung administration and the GWK park operator about options, including whether to build a new Sarbagita bus stop near the entrance gate or to have feeder buses stationed inside the park.
“With all the current flaws, we’ve decided to persist in running the buses because we want the public to notice our presence over the next couple of weeks. While operating, of course, we will continue improving our services, while also hoping that matters related to funding are cleared,” said Parsa.
Sarbagita, which stands for Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar and Tabanan regencies, began opera-
tions opening the Rp 4 billion Batubulan-Nusa Dua route in August last year.
