and Olivia Rondonuwu Reuters JAKARTA — Traffic in Indonesia's capital snarls so badly during rush hour that even motorbikes face gridlock and to get ahead a group of commuters have taken up an extreme sport: cycling to work. For professionals who belong to the Bike 2 Work club, cycling is a cooler alternative in a city in which cars, motorbikes, taxis, buses and trains are the main transport options. That matters in Indonesia, which is the largest economy in Southeast Asia. Almost everyone has a horror story about a short journey that took hours as traffic ground to a halt. Some 25 million people live in the Greater Jakarta area with 9.2 million in the city itself and together they make 22 million trips per day in 11.36 million vehicles, according to police and government figures. In Jakarta alone, there are now more than 8 million motorbikes and commuters are not only abandoning cars for a faster alternative; they are abandoning public transport for motorbikes too, said deputy Jakarta Governor Sutanto Soehodho. To put it another way, Jakarta's annual vehicle growth is 9-10 percent but the city's road network expands at just 0.01 percent, Soehodho said, raising the prospect of a gridlock. Investors are looking at road building to address Jakarta's overload and a land bill passed by parliament in December is viewed as a vital to overcoming the hurdle of land acquisition. Japan is funding a first subway line in Jakarta with a soft loan, though it is not expected to start until at least 2016. For now, commuters are finding their own way out of the crisis. Motorbikes can weave between cars stuck in a jam but bikes can weave between motorbikes stuck in a jam if they have the nerve. There are around 100 cyclists in the Bike 2 Work group and dozens of other such groups around the city and enthusiasts say they are attracting new members all the time. Nearly every member interviewed said they had been involved in an accident. Even so, the group is held together by camaraderie and the knowledge that if everybody followed their lead, Jakarta's traffic problem would be solved at a stroke. __
