Bali’s roads were overcrowded with vehicles throughout the 2023 year-end holiday, prompting the local government to address the vexing issue concerning tourists and local residents.
One solution is the construction of the Southern Ring Road, which has once again arisen as a medium-term measure to handle congestion in the South Bali area.
Badung Regional Secretary, Adi Arnawa, explained that land acquisition is currently underway at the McDonald’s intersection heading to Nusa Dua and several other points. Afterwards, the Badung Regency Government hopes the central government will promptly execute its construction.
“We hope that by 2025, it will become a national program. In the meantime, we will also carry out land acquisition to make the Southern Ring Road an effort to overcome traffic jams around Uluwatu via Ayana,” explained Arnawa on Wednesday, 3rd January 2024.
Another solution is the use of shuttle buses. The government aims to limit the flow of private vehicles to tourist destinations such as Canggu and Uluwatu by providing shuttle buses on Jalan Gatot Subroto Denpasar. In due time, cars from outside the area will be stopped on Jalan Gatot Subroto so that passengers will be directed to use available shuttle buses to travel to Canggu.
These shuttle buses also operate at the airport with routes to several tourist points on the island, such as Nusa Dua, Sunset Road Central Parking, and Benoa, travelling along Kuta, Legian, and Canggu at 15-minute intervals.
The Acting Governor of Bali, Sang Made Mahendra Jaya, explained that providing shuttle buses is a short-term solution to overcome traffic jams in South Badung. For medium-term solutions, efforts will be made to build underpasses on the Udayana Jimbaran and Nusa Dua Campus routes, widen roads, and the Ungasan-Jimbaran circular road.
“In the long run, the government will build LRT trains from the airport to a number of points where traffic has been heavy, such as Legian, Seminyak, and Canggu,” he added.
According to the Head of Public Relations of the Bali Regional Police, Commissioner Jansen Avitus Panjaitan, traffic flow around Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar, and Tabanan started to return to normal on Tuesday, 2nd January, or after the holidays.
“The traffic jams that occurred a few days ago will certainly not happen in the future. Hopefully, in future holidays, road users can comply with traffic regulations and provisions that have been regulated by the Bali Provincial Government and the ranks, so that we can overcome the impact of increasing traffic flow together, and at the same time, the community can carry out their holidays safely, orderly and smoothly,” said Panjaitan.
The Ngurah Rai Bypass Road experienced its worst congestion to date on Friday, 29th December 2023. For approximately four kilometres, many foreign and local tourists were forced to walk to I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport to catch their flights since long queues of vehicles formed from the Dewa Ruci intersection as well as the Jimbaran-Nusa Dua intersection.