bajay

Bajay is the most popular public transport in Jakarta, Indonesia. Three wheels, red scheme, high vibration, noisy engine, and high pollution exhaust. Bajay came from India as city public transport.

The bajay service system is like as taxi but different vehicle quality. Passenger stops bajay, asks the driver to carry to desire destination and negotiates the cost for this service. If driver and passenger agreed, passenger opens the door and sits down behind the driver. Before Bajay starts to run, passenger must be ready to suffer high vibration and suddenly turn. Bajay could turn left or right suddenly depend on driver desire. It makes bajay very agile and makes one idiom: “Only God and driver that know when bajay will turn”.

Bajay have some advantage than other public transport. High speed, agile to passing traffic jam, efficient, could use narrow street, and cheap. Some bajay drivers allow his vehicle to carry until 5 persons. Of course, the passengers must be slim enough.

Although bajay give some problem like pollution, traffic jam, dirty look, and chaos in traffic, but some people still rely on bajay for support their activity. The speed, easy to use, and cheap cost make bajay still many in Jakarta.

The local government tries to reduce bad impact of Bajay by give limitation to bajay operational area and replace old bajay with new bajay using environment friendly gas engine. The new bajays are cleaner, wider, smoother, and better look than old bajay. The replacement process couldn’t quick enough because need some million rupiah investment per bajay. So, we still found more number of red old bajay than green new bajay. Some people that use bajay daily prefer old bajay because new bajay slower than old one. Actually old bajay more agile than new one because new bajay wider than the old one.

For people lives far outside Jakarta, Bajay is trademark of Jakarta public transport. You couldn’t say ever go to Jakarta if you weren’t feel Bajay vibration yet. So, if you in Jakarta, please tries one of this Jakarta trade mark.

For your info, you must know your destination and the cost first before using Bajay. For reference : minimum payment is 3000 rupiah, until 1 km is about 5000 rupiah, 1-2 km is about 7000 rupiah.