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Stopping Indonesia’s Roof Riders with Threatening Concrete Balls

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Workers install a frame with concrete balls suspended on it above railroad tracks in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)

Indonesia has gone to imaginative extremes to try to stop commuters from riding the roofs of trains.

Now they have an intimidating and possibly even deadly new tactic: Suspending concrete balls above railway lines a few inches above the tops of carriages at points where trains enter or pull out of stations.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta about the new system to stop roof riders.

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Marco Werman: Officials in India may want kids to get on the bus but officials in Indonesia want people to get off the trains, specifically the tops of trains. They started hanging concrete balls above rail lines to try to keep commuters from riding on the roof. The first balls were installed at a station outside the capital Jakarta. The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani is in Jakarta. She says the scheme is just the latest in an effort to get people off the tops of trains.

Karishma Vaswani: They’ve sprayed the train carriages with paint. They’ve put oil on top of the carriages so that they become far more slippery and it becomes quite difficult to stay on top. They’ve even hired musicians to sing about personal safety at these train stations in an attempt to educate people that this is really quite dangerous and you could end up risking your life and limb by getting on top of these trains and hitching a free ride. Of course, there’s an economic incentive for them to get these passengers off the trains because when you’re on top of a train you’re not paying for a ticket to get inside, and that’s what they want to do. They want to get these passengers back inside the trains.

Werman: And, are people dying riding on top of the trains?

Vaswani: Yes, Marco; they are. The numbers are quite dire. We’ve seen just a few reports. In 2008, I think, about 53 passengers died in an accident after boarding a train roof, and that was just the reported figure. A lot of these deaths, as you can imagine, do go unreported because there’s no way of telling often how many people actually get on top of these trains. As you can imagine, it’s quite a fluid sort of arrangement. People hop on and sometimes they get spotted and then they hop off, and sometimes they don’t. Many of these people end up being electrocuted by power cables that are hanging along the train tracks, and some just simply fall off. So, it is a dangerous journey rather, but it’s one that many commuters say they’re willing to risk because of the various factors that they cite as why they choose to get on top of the trains in the first place.

Werman: Well, I was going to ask you, Karishma, are people on the roofs because they’re thrill seekers? I mean, I’ve read some comments from officials in Indonesia that seem to indicate that many people ride the roofs of cars because there’s no room inside the rail car.

Vaswani: Well, Marco, it’s a number of things actually though. One that you were pointing out, the fact that there are thrill seekers, yes; but there are two other factors here. One is that these trains are usually extremely overcrowded. You try getting into a Jakarta train at rush hour either in the morning or late in the evening when people are headed home and it’s no fun, I’ve got to tell you. So, a lot of people just say, “Right. Well, I’ve got to get to work”, or “I’m desperate to get home and I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a, sort of, sardine sandwich, so I’ll just get on top of the train.” Now, the other factor is economic. Although train tickets would seem extremely cheap to someone living in New York or in San Francisco, here in Indonesia it’s still out of reach for a lot of poor people and they want to get around as well. So, some people just decide, right, it’s worth the risk, I don’t have to pay, I’ll just jump on top of the train and hitch a free ride.

Werman: Why is the government just focusing on deterring people from rail surfing? Has the government explored the idea of expanding the number of lines, the number of trains, so somebody misses one they can catch one a couple of minutes later?

Vaswani: Well, this is another huge issue in Indonesia and you’re absolutely right, Marco. Rather than just stopping these passengers from getting on top of the trains, they’ve really got to start looking at a long-term solution here, but Indonesia’s infrastructure just isn’t keeping up with the pace at which this country is growing. It’s not just the railways; it’s the ports, it’s the roads, it’s the airports. You can see signs of this overcrowding on Jakarta streets almost every day. I mean, the tales of traffic jams here are infamous. This is one of the major issues for the government as it tries to modernize the economy and the pace at which this country is growing and, for the infrastructure to keep up, Indonesia needs billions of dollars of investment. It is time to attract that from the international community, but I guess it’s just not happening fast enough.

Werman: The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta. You can see a photo of the concrete balls to deter roof riders. They’re at theworld.org.

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Read More
• Washington Post: New effort to keep Indonesian commuters off the roofs of trains: suspended concrete balls
• Karishma Vaswani on Twitter