Booked out. Thursday was a public holiday in Indonesia and every ticket was sold on the 11.30am fast train service between the two commercial hubs of Jakarta and Bandung on the island of Java. The Whoosh train takes just 30 minutes to travel about 142 kilometres between the two cities – a journey that can take five hours or more by road.
The high-speed electric line is one of the fastest trains operating anywhere – if we could transplant to Australia, you could travel from Sydney to Canberra in about an hour.Construction was not smooth. It took years longer and cost $US7.3 billion ($11.24 billion) – $US1.2 billion more than anticipated. Small landholders, many of them farmers, had to give way and it’s yet to be seen if patronage will be enough to cover the investment. But it is easily the most advanced transport system in Indonesia – where traffic snarls are notorious – and it was built with Chinese money.This year the president commonly known as Jokowi will leave office after serving the maximum two term