Death Stalks the Rails
Hundreds of people are killed and billions of rupiah in damage is caused every year on the death tracks we call the railways. The reasons are varied. Human error may be one of them: the engineer falls asleep or the signalman is negligent. The prevailing system of signals is a mess, with patchy maintenance due to lack of funds. Much of the spare equipment is broken or neglected and fails to function. Natural factors, such as floods and landslides, sometimes can play a role in derailing trains. Why is it so difficult for PT KAI to rectify these concerns?
February 12, 2002
An e-mail got into the mailing list of Kereta Api - Railways and Trains in Indonesia, whose address is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/keretaapi. The sender said there had been a change of name and that the Indonesian acronym for the state railway company and sole rail operator PT KAI (Kereta Api Indonesia) now stood for the Indonesian Railway Crash Company (Perusahaan Tabrakan Kereta Api Indonesia). This may have been just a joke, but it could ref
...