A recent trip to Indonesia was filled with new experiences — intense street life, squat toilets, extreme rain storms, and Southeast-Asian traffic. From the depths of rural Borneo to the urban jungle of the capital city of Jakarta, I discovered the overwhelming popularity of motor bikes for almost all Indonesians.
The proliferation of the motor bike as the main means of transportation stems from Indonesia’s primarily pedestrian culture. The motor bike itself allows efficient transportation at the expense of a heavy reliance on foreign oil, a situation we struggle with in the US. Yet, the motor bike is considerably smaller than even the smartest smart car which allows drivers to behave differently within the standard 12′ wide lanes.
While driving across central Java, I observed traffic patterns shared among motorbikes, bicycles, and pedestrians — a distinctive pattern characterized by ostensible ‘chaos’ or ‘disorder’. We’ve all seen these patterns before. Imagine walking down a crowded sidewalk while in a hurry and having to bob and weave around others, executing careful negotiations of position as you pass each person or standing obstacle. Imagine choosing to slow down to walk aside someone as you hold their hand or speed up as you realize you’re late. There’s no resistance from others except your ability to negotiate physical space within the path of others. The sidewalk allows you to do this because so many people can fit with one ‘lane’. It is this natural form of moving that also characterizes bicycle and motor bike traffic, except of course at increased speeds. The result, while seemingly chaotic, is in fact organic movement of a group of people and far less frustrating for each commuter. The lesson here is that there is a shared understanding that ‘there are no rules’.
It struck me that the traffic patterns formed by these methods of transportation are all distinct from the single-file method forced upon private automobiles on a normal road. Cars cannot jockey for position or improvise along the way. If a car driver is lucky, there would be an alternate lane, a second channel to try his luck, but chances are this second option is not any better than the first. Cars must follow the person in front of them while maintaining the speed of others. No wonder people get road rage — car transportation is mass homogenization in motion.
I’m not sure what lessons could or should be applied to ease private automobile commutes, except the idea of making ever street 16 lanes wide to allow for natural negotiation of positions. But who would want to cross that street? For me, i’ll stick to commuting on foot and bicycle whenever possible.
Ted Ullrich is a designer, cycling enthusiast and continuing contributer to Commuter Culture now living in New York. Visit his flickr to view more pictures and videos from the trip.
I’m really interested in the comparison of motor bike traffic to that of herd movement. I keep getting stuck on this idea that human beings really like to ‘organize’ everything. We organized suburbia into buckets, and that failed miserably. I guess you could say that we’ve organized movement and developed a system for cars to live in. Not that we should abandon all systems and become tribal again, but where is that fine line between easy to navigate, well organized information, and organizing things that work better if left alone? How to you determine that?
Comment by Melissa on May 7, 2009 at 4:39 pm
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