History
The project suffered from many financial problems and frequent technology partner changes tarnished its reputation.
The project was initially awarded in 2003 to Malaysian company MTrans, the technology owner and builders of the KL Monorail, construction started in June 2004 but was halted after only a few weeks after the funds for the project stopped. MTrans' memorandum of understanding (MoU) was then cancelled after MTrans didn't respond adequately, and the MoU did not move towards a formal agreement.
The project was subsequently awarded to the Singaporean-led Omnico consortium, which proposed to use the Hitachi Monorail system (the base used for the KL Monorail) and then later on switched to the maglev technology by South Korean company ROTEM.
In July 2005, the project changed hands again with a new MoU granted to a consortium of Indonesian companies PT Bukaka Teknik Utama, PT INKA and Siemens Indonesia. (Vice president Jusuf Kalla, who assumed office in October 2004, owns a large stake in Bukaka.) Omnico contested this move, but construction continued nonetheless, under the assumption that the basic foundation piles and pillars can be used by whichever consortium and technology wins in the end. By 2006, a change in shareholder structure resulted to PT Indonesia Transit Central (ITC) controlling 98 percent of the shares in the company, leaving partner Omnico with only 2 percent, reduced from its initial 45 percent.
In March 2008, developers PT Jakarta Monorail officially abandoned the project. Then, in April, numerous pylons to support the future track were illegally demolished, probably by metal thieves. The city administration continues to look for a new partner, but no firm decision has been made.
Read more about this topic: Jakarta Monorail
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)