Introduction

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Indonesia was reported on March 2, 2020 in Jakarta. The disease has since spread rampantly to other major cities, and Jakarta has remained to be the nation's epicenter. To flatten the epidemic curve, on March 16 Jakarta's Governor Anies Baswedan acted on President Joko Widodo's call to shelter-in-place voluntarily by restricting mobility and in particular, cutting public transportation services and limiting vehicle capacity by 50 percent. A ‘soft’ city-wide lockdown was imposed on April 4, effectively shutting down all schools, offices, and ‘non-essential’ businesses in fighting the pandemic.

After multiple two-week extensions, Mr Baswedan revealed plans to dial down the large-scale social restrictions on June 4, 2020. The two-week ‘transition’ period allowed some businesses to reopen in phases, keeping physical distancing measures, health and hygiene protocols, including maskwearing mandates, and symptom surveillance. Unfortunately, Mr Baswedan was unable to prevent mass gatherings during public holidays and public protests in the following 12 weeks. What was supposed to be a period of transition to a new normal has instead seen surging cases and hospitalization rates. On September 9, 2020, Mr Baswedan announced his plan to reinstate wide-scale social restrictions, citing alarmingly high number of daily COVID-19 cases as well as the nearing capacity hospital bed occupancy rate. The fight against the pandemic turned out to be far from over.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted Jakartans, especially those who are heavily dependent on public transportation. On one hand, service cuts can be justified as studies have indicated that, without robust mask mandates and physical distancing measures, public transportation riders may accelerate the spread of COVID-19 (Lee et al, 2020). Service cuts also allowed TransJakarta, the municipal bus operator, to divert resources to join the fight against the pandemic. Buses were redirected to shuttling medical professionals from hospitals to their government-funded temporary hotels.

Social and economic disruptions by the COVID-19 pandemic have had severe impacts on the welfare of Jakartans. Similarly, the mobility disruptions by the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted Jakartans from all walks of life, including those working in the informal sector and the poor. We hypothesize that past efforts to improve public transportation, access to two-wheelers, and mobility justice in general have partially mitigated the impacts of COVID-19 on Jakartans.