The Jakarta-Surabaya high speed train will become a viable alternative to plane travel with the Indonesian and Japanese partnership agreeing to a travel time of five-and-a-half hours between the two cities, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said.
He said that the two governments, who are working in partnership to construct the railway project, reached the agreement regarding the travel time during a meeting with Japanese Defense, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism Minister Takao Makino in Nusa Dua, Bali, on Wednesday.
The high-speed train will be almost twice as fast as normal trains servicing the same route–averaging a travelling time of nine hours.
“With such a [high] speed, the train could be operated twice a day. It would help increase the capacity of the train. I have told the Japanese side to study it and Mr Makino agreed [to my proposal],” as quoted by tribunnews.com.
The Japanese government also agreed with the Indonesian decision to use the existing railway tracks and to complete the study by mid-November.
In the meeting in Bali, the two governments also discussed two other projects, namely the Patimban Port in West Java and the mass rapid transit (MRT) in Jakarta. The MRT project, Budi said, will be completed in 2019.
Featured photo by The Jakarta Post.