A light rail for Bali? Island trains thoughts on tackling congestion

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Bali: It’s mid-afternoon and the main road in Canggu is at a standstill, jammed with motorcycles, cars and trucks.

It could be just about any day in the coastal Bali town, a trendy haven for surfers, influencers and other expatriates, or elsewhere in the island’s most bustling tourist areas.

Heavy afternoon traffic at Canggu makes for slow going on the road. Credit: Amilia Rosa

While Bali has bounced back from the pain of the pandemic – more than 15 million visitors have flown there this year so far, among them 1 million Australians – congestion has built up again on its narrow streets and can be challenging to navigate.

For years authorities in Jakarta and Denpasar have mulled ways to tackle the traffic, in particular from Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport.

Now, they have all but settled on a plan – a light rail line connecting the airport with the tourist hubs of Kuta and Seminyak and extending onwards to Canggu and, finally, north to Mengwi, from where it would be a closer drive to the rice paddies and wellness retreats of Ubud.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s most senior minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said last month he was expecting to break ground on the first stage of a proposed 30-kilometre line next year, revealing foreign investment interest from China, Japan and South Korea.

He said that if the project did not get under way soon “we will be stuck at the airport for three hours” by 2026.

Bali’s provincial government forecasts there will be 39.4 million people per year passing its arrival and departure terminals by 2034 – double what is anticipated this year. By the point the annual figure hits 29.3 million, access to the airport is projected to be severely congested.

The location of its runaway, which sits across almost the full width of the strip of land separating Kuta and Bali’s southern tip, creates a geographical bottleneck officials are adamant needs particular attention.

“The load for airport traffic in Bali will increase, and with the current tourists’ recovery, soon, without an option like the LRT [light rail transit], the traffic would be a big problem,” said I Gede Wayan Samsi Gunarta, the head of the Bali government’s transportation department.

I Gede Wayan Samsi Gunarta, head of the Bali government’s transportation department, stands next to an ART model from China. Credit: Amilia Rosa

“We have heavy traffic coming and leaving the airport, almost daily now peaking at around 5pm to 8pm.”

Ambitions for a rail network in Bali, however, face significant obstacles, not least because of costs.

The proposed first leg – an underground line from the airport to Kuta Central Parking, a lot 2.5 kilometres east of the beach – was in 2020 budgeted at 9 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($897 million). That was without taking into account the trains themselves.

Gunarta said there had also been interest from the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates in being involved but the government of Widodo, popularly referred to as Jokowi, was also weighing up delivering the funding itself. An LRT is the favoured alternative, according to Gunarta, although autonomous rail rapid transit (ART) and bus rapid transit (BRT) are also being considered and the results of a feasibility study will determine the option ultimately chosen.

A traffic policeman attempts to unravel a build-up of vehicles in Canggu.Credit: Amilia Rosa

“We estimate now with the current technology and price increase, that original costs have gone up by 30 per cent. Just in three years the cost has gone up that high … if we delay it even further it will go up even higher. That’s why we need to start the project urgently,” he said.

“There are advantages and disadvantages for each [funding] option. If we funded it ourselves, we would be free to choose from the available technologies. If we choose a certain country, we have to rely on their available technologies and financial options attached to the projects.”

It was less than a month ago that Widodo officially opened the $11 billion Chinese-backed Jakarta to Bandung high-speed train, the first of its kind in south-east Asia and a flagship branch of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Its construction was beset by delays and cost blowouts and it has been launched amid concerns about its financial burden on Indonesia, with predictions it won’t break even for 80 years.

The Bali vision is not of the same scale but like with the undertaking on Java must overcome great logistical difficulty.

The preference is for the northwards connections beyond Kuta to be above ground because, Gunarta said, tunnelling comes at three times the cost; however, that brings added complications with land acquisition and disruptions from development.

A government strategy document seen by this masthead also makes clear that elevated structures are unacceptable, considered not to fit “with local wisdom and Balinese aesthetic value”. Bali’s thousands of Hindu temples could also not be disturbed.

There may be a degree of scepticism about the timing of a Bali light rail being mooted by the central and regional governments. In just over three months Indonesia will hold presidential and legislative elections – so now is the time grand promises are usually made.

But with public transport in Bali almost non-existent, the need for a solution of some kind is undeniable.

“The roads were not built for this kind of traffic,” said Liam Hayes, a director of the Perth-based Indonesia Institute who lives in Bali’s Sanur area and founded a company assisting expats buy and sell businesses on the island.

“The only way I would get around is on a motorbike. But sometimes that’s not an option. I’m bringing some clients to view a business or whatever, then we have to take a car. I can talk and work from the car, but you just know you’re going to be there for a while. It’s got to be planned out.”

Even so, Hayes would hate to see a train line upsetting Bali’s natural beauty by ploughing through rice fields, for example.

It is clearly a delicate balance.

“The traffic … it’s not heavy all day long. It’s like Australia, there’s a rush hour with people going to work, people take their kids to school. The roads are busy in the morning and it’s the reverse in the afternoon, it’s like anywhere in the world,” he said.

“They need to do certain things, but also you don’t want to spoil the culture. One of the differences about Bali and anywhere else I’ve ever been is the connection between the people, the land and the gods.

“If you think of Bali as your garden, and you keep putting concrete in it, eventually you won’t have a garden.”

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