Palembang (06/12) – NGOBRAS, which is abbreviated from Chatting with Media and Community, is an event held by the Directorate General of Railways which discusses Optimizing LRT Services in the City of Palembang through Intermodal Integration.

On this occasion, the NGOBRAS event was held at the Wyndham Hotel, Palembang City. In this activity, Mr Rode Paulus as Head of the South Sumatra Light Railway Management Center and Mr Agus Supriyanto as Secretary of the Palembang City Transportation Service had the opportunity to be resource persons, and Mr Risal Wasal as Director General of Railways also gave a speech at the NGOBRAS event via the Zoom Meeting Application.

This event was held with the aim of encouraging people to use public transportation such as the integrated LRT. In his remarks, Mr. Risal Wasal said that LRT public transportation is not only safe, comfortable, but also cheap, so LRT is the right choice for choosing public transportation because it can optimize existing assets in Palembang. Rode Paulus, as the Light Rail Management Agency, also added to the advantages of LRT, namely that apart from being safe, comfortable and cheap. LRT is also a type of public transportation that is reliable and has a definite schedule, so it can avoid traffic jams. And currently, the South Sumatra LRT is pursuing a target of 4 million passengers throughout 2023. As of December 5, the number of South Sumatra LRT passengers has reached 3.7 million people.

"There are still 25 days left, the average daily LRT passengers must be 11,300 people per day to be able to reach the target of 4 million passengers. Currently the average per day is still 9,600 passengers (based on the achievement of 3.7 million passengers)," concluded Rode Paulus.

Another step in optimizing public transportation in the city of Palembang is to introduce feeders as transportation whose task is to collect passengers to be taken to LRT stations. The presence of feeders can increase the number of LRT passengers. According to Rode, 30 percent of feeder passengers also use LRT as a means of transportation. Currently the feeder is still operating free of charge, but starting next year the Palembang LRT feeder will be charged a tariff of around IDR 2-4 thousand, but the implementation of this tariff is still under study.