Bandung's New Angkot Design

Under the leadership of our new mayor, Ridwan Kamil, one of Indonesia's most prominent architects and city planners, Bandung has got a new hope and gradual facelift. Among the things he recently introduced is this: the new design for its ubiquitous and 'notorious' Angkot.

Instead of the plain colors designating the angkot's routes, the new design puts images of Bandung's most cherished heritage and attractions, and writing that says "Bandung, City of World Tourism" in Indonesian (Roman alphabets) and Sundanese alphabets.

This new design is part of the campaign to strengthen the citizen's awareness of the city's heritage and image so that they will be more active in taking part in keeping their city's cleanliness and beauty.

These photographs were taken by Agus Wahyudi, a photographer friend of mine and frequent contributor of Bandung Daily Photo. Thanks, Pak Agus.

Terminal Ledeng

Terminal Ledeng (Ledeng Bus Station) is one of the stations for the city buses and angkot minibuses (the main mode of public transportation in Bandung). It is located in the northern end of the city on Dr Setiabudhi street.

As you can see in the picture, old city buses like this - some as old as 25 years - are still operating in the city. Comfort and pollution are out of questions. Indeed this city direly needs to overhaul its public city transportation.

Inappropriate Language

I have previously posted several stories of the notorious ANGKOT (small public transportation bus) and its erratic behavior (click the angkot label below if you want to know more) and of funny Englishes that you can find in this city. What happens if both are combined?

Voila! At the back of this pink Angkot is written - please excuse me for writing it here - "Don't kiss my ass". What!?

I couldn't help but laughed when I saw and took this photograph.

Such is the street life in this city. There's always something going on if we really look. ^_^

Bandung Street Documentary (Street Photography) # 3: Getting on An Angkot

For those of you who have been to or are familiar with Bandung, the scene in the above photo may be very familiar. For those who have/are not and don't know what ANGKOT is, you can refer my previous post here.

This is my third post of Bandung Street Documentary Series photography project. In addition to being a documentary, this kind of photo may be categorized as street photography.

Oh, and here is what it looks like inside the angkot.

Street Photography: Waiting for The Angkot

Angkot (ANGkutan PerKOTaan), or urban/city transportation, is the main mode of transportation in the city of Bandung. It is a twelve to fourteen seater mini bus with a side-door entrance like the one shown in the above photograph. Instead of facing forward like in a "normal" bus, angkot passengers seat face to face on the side of the vehicle like in most commuter trains.

Angkot is color-coded to mark which route each vehicle is serving (in Bandung the color codes used are white, purple, green, blue, yellow, orange, brown, red, and pink).

Angkot is both a convenient necessity and a headache to Bandung's day to day reality. It's convenient because it is available nearly around the clock and everywhere, from the city center to the far corners of the city, and is relatively cheap. It also does not follow a set schedule like the city buses do, nor does it need a bus stop to get on or off. You can hail, stop, and get on and off it anywhere you want along its route. This way, it can literally take you door to door. This erratic behavior, however, is also the cause of a lot of headache to the other users of the roads. It causes traffic congestion and becomes a safety threat to other road users. Comfort, safety, and punctuality are nearly always an issue with the angkot.

Bandung definitely needs a more modern, comfortable, and well-regulated mode of public transportation, but I think it will be sometime before we can get rid of this necessary nuisance.

I took the above photograph on Jalan Wastukencana, Bandung, a few days ago.