The picture of green minivan stopping near a crowd shows an angkot, the city transportation in my hometown, Bogor, a city 60 kilometer southern Jakarta, the Capital of Indonesia.
More than 3000 minivans have served the society for more than 40 years and seem to keep serving people for another 5-10 years.
However, like seen on the picture, the minivan is empty with no passengers and the driver looked to the crowd direction, and I guess, hoping that some of them will use his service.
The scene represented by the photograph may mean nothing for anyone who don’t live in the city. But, not for me who have lived in the city for 44 years. It shows something that surely will happen in the future.
The change.
After their domination of the city streets for many years, their fate seems to have been written that not long from today, their service is no longer needed by the society. The presence of application based transportation, such as Grab, Uber, or Go-Jek have provided people with better choices. More than that, the public transportation policy in the city has supported more to mass transportation like Biskita, the cashless buss newly launched.
The need to use old era transportation drastically reduced to very minimum. Less people attracted to use the service of angkot. Passengers are less and less day by day.
The destiny of a public transportation which was originally village transportation has been decided. It may not today but definitely, they will be replaced and disappear from the city streets.
That’s why the picture to me is quite priceless. It represents what is happening on the city, the end chapter of the story between the people and the transportation.
Someday, the next generation may look for what kind of transportation in Bogor in the past and they may find this picture showing the time when angkot is near to their end of service.
(Bogor, November the 28th, 2022)