Modal Competition for Freight in Land Transportation on Jakarta-Surabaya corridor

Abstract

As a part of a set of research studies about the railways transport in Indonesia, we propose this results advancement. Nowadays, the freight railways system in Indonesia suffers a complex and an apparently not easy to solve situation. The freight service is in constant degradation and it lost demand progressively, more the new highways development plans threat to increase the attractively of road transport in detriment of railways. The identifications of the structural problems will let us to propose aimed and precisely solutions to broke the current vicious circle of the freight railways system.

Our analysis is supported by questionnaires applied to 93 forwarders/shippers in 186 opinions that usually contract freight transport services on the link. Each forwarder answered the same questions about his/her preferences for rail and for road freight services. We analyzed this data by the Logit model to identify the “factors of service” or variables which influence the decision of forwarders/shippers in the most important way.

The results show clearly the relative importance of some railways “factors and service” in function with the others for the same mode, as well as their relative influence for the modal decision compared with the road freight transports.

This paper aims to identify the structural problems of the freight railways service of “KERETA API” in the Java Island, especially between the cities of Jakarta and Surabaya which are the most important city in Indonesia.

Key words: Indonesia railway development, modal competition, freight transportation, modal choice