Outwith: Drivers jockey for position as gridlock worsens

For the equivalent of 50p, car owners hire one or two jockeys to gain access to stretches of the city's "three-in-one" high-occupancy lanes. The jockey is essentially an extra passenger who helps commuters circumvent car-pooling rules, making the ride into central Jakarta slightly less slow.

But the city blames the jockeys for worsening the city's gridlock. The authorities have long rounded up jockeys and sent them to detention centres, where they are made to mop floors and do push-ups. And now the city, which has made periodic moves to scrap the car-pooling system altogether, is considering replacing it with an electronic card system that will render the jockeys obsolete.

The countdown may have begun, and not only for the jockeys. By 2011, Jakarta officials predict that the city will experience "total traffic", or complete paralysis. Traffic jams already cost the city 800 million a year in lost time and fuel, as well as health problems.

Nothing, though, has put a lid on the booming jockey business.

"I don't think the three-in-one system works, because the number of jockeys and cars is increasing at the same time," said Asep Suherman, 19, who became a jockey at the age of ten, works the morning and evening rush hours, and whiles away the time in between by relaxing at a mosque. "But even if it's not working, I want them to extend the hours, because the system is good for us poor people."

Asep stood recently among dozens of women, men, boys and entire families, all lining the entrance to a main thoroughfare here and beckoning passing cars with a slightly raised index finger. The jockeys scattered as a police van made a perfunctory sweep but returned to their spots even before the vehicle's flashing blue lights disappeared in Jakarta's twilight.

And so Jakarta moved on, or did so very slowly, in a state of traffic limbo that many have likened to Indonesia itself, or at least its ingenuity in skirting regulations, and the vibrancy of its informal economy.

According to the city, 236 new cars and 891 new motorcycles appear every day in Jakarta, for an annual increase of 9.5 per cent. The number of new roads the city has been building stands just above zero.

Hendah Sunugroho, who oversees land transportation at the city's transportation agency, said the city was looking to replace the three-in-one scheme with an electronic card system, called Electronic Road Pricing, so that revenues would go to "local governments, not jockeys".

Rusdi Muchtar, an anthropologist at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, said the three-in-one amounted to an "informal social security".

"There's an emotional attachment between the car owner and jockey, between the poor and those who can afford a car and who are still a minority," said Rusdi. "Car owners feel emotional satisfaction that they are doing a good deed."

Perhaps because of that, or perhaps because of concerns over safety, most car owners prefer employing children as jockeys.

Angga, an 11-year-old boy who puts in time as a jockey after school, had just returned from his first ride, beaming. He had earned about 50p and paid less than 10p to return by bus to his starting point.

Asep said finding customers was getting harder the older he got. In the mornings, he relies on three regulars who have hired him for the past two years. But with no customers this evening, Asep was already thinking about calling it a night.

He bantered with another jockey, a young woman, about going to the train station together. He stopped short of flirting, possibly because he could see his mother down the road, still looking for a ride.

"I met a girl once," he said. "But it was too difficult for her because I'm a jockey."

But recently, two friends, jockeys who had met at this particular spot, got married. "They have a five-month-old baby now," he said. "And all three of them are now jockeys."