We Jakartans have a very high tolerance for traffic jams. I always feel thankful when I see the traffic people have to go through to get to their offices and homes. I am one of the lucky ones that doesn’t have to share that experience (I live nearby to my office.) I also always try to invest more in internet connections and file sharing options (like www.yousendit.com) than to invest in gasoline and time. I believe there’s a lot of inefficient practices that we as an ‘old’ business society go through, like getting through 2 hours of traffic for a 10 minutes face-time, or having half a day of meeting when addressing matters that a couple email attachments and phone calls can fix. I am positive that if we can slowly change the ‘old’ way of doing business, we can contribute to lesser cars on the Jakarta street, no matter how little.

But, if I have to go, like all the people who drives a car in Jakarta, we would really like to know how is it out there, rite? Jakarta traffic jams have 80% predictability, which leaves us with that 20% of please-no-traffic-jam-hope. We envy the people in US who have Google live traffic report from their mobiles, or people in in a technological savvy world who have traffic report website to plan their route to their destination.

As I recall, we have some of those things here (TV stations websites if I remember correctly). But unfortunately they are poorly managed, be it management issues, IT issues, bandwith issues, the inconsistensies make them unusable. We have FM radio reports though, but I don’t listen to radio that much, and the lack of choice (you can only hear and not make a selection) makes this type of reporting not quite attractive (for me at least)

Well, I bumped into this website while browsing the net (an ad from facebook I think) – about live traffic reports around Jakarta. When I click one of the live webcam, and see how smooth and ‘live’ it is, I think I muttered, “its about time….”

It’s a good start. Really simple with a smooth, low bandwith stream of live webcams (it’s a minute late, but its more-more than enough). They also have a pane for people texting in reporting the traffic.

I have big hopes for this thing to take off. I envision them to be as successful as detik.com, where people look for news when somethin’s breaking (remember the riot times? we refresh detik.com like crazy, hehehe..) – people will also look to www.macetlagi.com whenever they are leaving the building.

I email them a note, reminding them to keep up the good work, to install more cameras, and to be consistent in their services. A lot of great ideas die in the process. If they can keep it up, people will *definetely* come to their site (whoever doesn’t need a live traffic report in Jakarta please raise their hands… Anybody?) After all, its the website hits every webmaster after, so they could put on a good price on their banners.

So come on, save this number on your mobile : 0856 723 4599 – and text them whenever you are in a traffic, jammed or not. If you are in a high rise building, and have the access or power to put a camera outside your window, please offer them your help (I dunno about the arrangements). And guess what? They come in mobile version! It’s not Google Live Traffic, but hey, it’s a start! www.macetlagi.com/mobile

Spread the news, share the link. They need the hits to get this one to work. And hopefully, it *will* work.

Edward

UPDATE: They return my email right away:

Dear Pak Edward,

We just read your blog and we felt really motivated by your words of
encouragement. We, like you and millions of other travellers on the
street of Jakarta bears the same frustration. So, we are thinking hard
how to deal with the situation. Macetlagi.com is just at the beginning of
our journey to help the people of Jakarta. Right now, we have only 11
cameras (I think). We are trying very hard to have 25 cameras by year end
and our target is to “surround” jakarta with 200 live traffic cameras by
next year. We are also struggling in developing more features at the
moment, as we think that traffic cameras will not be a total solution to
help ease the pain.

Pak Edward, once again, thank you for your word of encouragement. Please
help spread the news to other people, so we can help each other.

Best Regards,

Macetlagi.com

See? More cameras are coming! Donor your spot 🙂