Jakarta (25/11) - The Ministry of Transportation through the Directorate General of Railways (DJKA) has built around 1,937 km of railway lines in a period of 15 years or since DJKA was formed in 2006.

"The construction of the railway line that has been carried out includes the construction of new lines, as well as the improvement and reactivation of old lines," said Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi when he was a keynote speaker at the "15 Years of DJKA, Knitting the Hopes of Indonesian Railways" webinar held by the Ministry of Transportation's DJKA, Thursday (25/11).

Some of the priority railway development projects carried out include: the construction of a double-track railway crossing the North and South of Java, the Airport Train in North Sumatra, West Sumatra, South Sumatra, Solo, Yogya, and Jakarta.

The Minister of Transportation said that a number of other efforts made by DJKA in an effort to improve national railway services in the period 2006-2021 were: building or revitalizing and renovating a number of train stations in various regions.

Then, build urban trains, both KRL, LRT, and MRT, as an effort to facilitate community mobility and reduce air pollution levels, and adopt modern railway technology.

In addition, providing subsidies, both in pioneer transportation schemes and in the form of Public Service Obligations (PSO), so that these modes have affordable prices so that they can serve people from all walks of life.

Furthermore, improving the safety aspect of rail travel, namely by eliminating level crossings by building underpasses, overpasses, and other efforts, improving signaling systems, and monitoring and testing railways.

Through the development carried out, until now the train transportation has served up to more than 3.7 billion passengers and approximately 426 million tons of transported logistics commodities. In addition, train travel has also become safer, safer, and more comfortable, and on-time performance has also increased.

"A number of developments in the railway sector are carried out to improve connectivity between regions in Indonesia, as well as to realize reliable, competitive, and value-added services," said the Minister of Transportation.

The Minister of Transportation further explained, continuing to strive to build an inclusive national railway sector, by encouraging the involvement of the community and business actors.

"We want to build the railway sector with a multi-operator approach and open space for parties to jointly develop and advance this sector," said the Minister of Transportation.

The Minister of Transportation said that according to the mandate of Law no. 23 of 2007 concerning Railways and Law no. 11 of 2020 concerning Job Creation, requires ease of doing business in the railway sector. This was revealed through Government Regulation Number 33 of 2021 concerning Railway Operations, which aims to increase the ease of doing business index in the railway sector so that more operators will appear.

The Minister of Transportation expressed his appreciation to all rail transportation personnel, both from the Central and Regional Government elements, BUMN and private sector as well as academics, for their high dedication in advancing rail transportation.

According to the Minister of Transportation, there is still a lot of homework that needs to be done to improve national railway services.

"We continue to strive to develop the railway sector, which can support the national economic recovery program, create jobs, increase investment in the real sector and industrialization as well as provide basic infrastructure, economic infrastructure, and urban infrastructure," said the Minister of Transportation.

In this webinar, a number of speakers were present, namely: Secretary of Directorate General of Railways Zulmafendi, Deputy for Facilities and Infrastructure of the Ministry of National Development Planning/Bappenas Josaphan Rizal Primana, Chairman of MTI Agus Taufik Mulyono, Transportation Observer Djoko Setijowarno and celebrity train users Olivia Zalianty.