The Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR), the first HSR in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, handled 383,000 passenger trips in its first month of official operation, China State Railway Group Co said on Friday.
Passenger flow saw a strong upward momentum, the Chinese state railway operator said, with highest single day ridership reaching 98.7 percent occupancy rate during the period.
The Jakarta-Bandung HSR, which is 142 kilometers long with a maximum design speed of 350 kilometers per hour, is operated by a consortium of Indonesian and Chinese firms including a unit under the China State Railway Group. It has cut the journey between the two cities from 3.5 hours to just 46 minutes.
Since the HSR’s official operation began on October 17, the high demand from passengers has shown the HSR has become a favorable transport means for the local people, the railway operator said.
Since November 1, the HSR’s operator has doubled the daily active trains on service to 28 from 14 in the initial phase of operation. As a result, the daily available seats were doubled from 8,000 to 16,000. During weekends, the number of active trains was further increased to 36 to meet peak demand.
Ridership continued to reach new highs, and the daily passenger volume increased from 4,131 to 21,359 while the occupancy rate increased from 49 percent to 98.7 percent.
The Jakarta-Bandung HSR is a landmark project under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, and is seen by experts as injecting momentum into regional economic and social development and offering a demonstration effect for future BRI developments.
The HSR is also the first project under which Chinese high-speed railway technology was implemented in a comprehensive way outside of China, with the whole system, all elements and the entire industrial chain.
Some insiders predicted in September that ridership of the HSR could exceed 10 million trips in the first year of operation.
(Global Times)
