TRAGEDY OF COMMONS IN JAKARTAS PUBLIC ROAD

Kharisma Baptiswan

8A DIV Accounting Matriculation Class, STAN, South Tangerang

kharisma.baptiswan@gmail.com

Abstract

Public goods casually explained as goods and services that are provided through public sector. Public road is

one example of public goods. Yet to some extent, public road loses its characteristics as public goods due to a

certain factor that is tragedy of commons. This changes often cause problems for public goods users. Quick

solutions are needed to overcome this problem.

Keywords: Public, road, tragedy of commons

Introduction

Jakarta is a capital of Indonesia. Indonesia

has been recognized as one of popular emerging

markets for almost a decade. Jakarta as economic

center of Indonesia, figured by its very high

velocity of money dominance, became a famous

destination for investor and labors alike. With

population more than 10 million people during the

day and 9 million people during the night, Jakarta

is very saturated.

Traditionally, a public road is an open

public way used for the passage of vehicles, people

and animals. Imagine public roads as blood veins.

It conveys blood to many different parts of organs.

Public road also conveys people to do their socio-

economic needs. Jakarta which is filled with so

many people has been experiencing one unresolved

problem until now. This crowded condition has

been considered as main cause of public road

congestion.

Theory of Public Goods

Public goods can be defined in two ways,

which is casually and abstractly. Public goods

casually explained as goods and services that are

provided through public sector (Holcombe, 1996;

Heikkila, 2000; Ulbrich, 2003). But this definition

cannot capture the true spirit of public goods.

Mankiw (2009) describe public goods as goods that

are neither excludable nor rival in consumption.

Furthermore Mankiw explain these two natures as

follow. Excludable means that the property of a

good whereby a person can be prevented from

using it. Rival in consumption means the property

of a good whereby one persons use diminishes other peoples use.

Goods that perfectly maintain these two

natures are called public goods and it is very

difficult to find examples for this kind of goods.

The closest we can get is national defense. Mankiw

explain that the defense of a country from foreign

aggressors is a classic example of a public good.

Once the country is defended, it is impossible to

prevent any single person from enjoying the benefit

of this defense. Moreover, when one person enjoys

the benefit of national defense, he does not reduce

the benefit to anyone else. Thus, national defense is

neither excludable nor rival in consumption.

Another example of public goods is public road.

There are also some form of goods besides public

goods. They are private goods, club/toll goods and

common goods.

Private goods are both excludable and rival in

consumption. For example a krabby patty. A

krabby patty is excludable because it is possible to

prevent someone from eating a krabby patty. A

krabby patty is rival in consumption because if one

person eats a krabby patty, another person cannot

eat the same thing. Most goods in the economy are

private goods like krabby patties: You dont get one unless you pay for it, and once you have it, you

are the only person who benefits (Mankiw, 2009).

Club goods are excludable but non-rival in

consumption. An example is water service. Local

government provide water service to citizens who

pay monthly fee for that service although water, in

essence, is natural resources available to everyone.

Common resources or common goods are rival

in consumption but not excludable. For example,

fish in the ocean are rival in consumption: When

one person catches fish, there are fewer fish for the

next person to catch. Yet these fish are not an

excludable good because, given the vast size of an

ocean, it is difficult to stop fishermen from taking

fish out of it.

Tragedy of Commons in Public Road

In its basic form of service, public road is

public good but as number of users increase and

public road growth is slow, changes in public

goods nature begin to surface and congestion

occurs. This phenomenon is called tragedy of

commons (Garrett Hardin, 1968).

Mankiw explained tragedy of the commons as

a parable that illustrates why common resources are

used more than is desirable from the standpoint of

society as a whole. We can explain this easily using

our object of choice here that is public road. At first

road is available for everyone for free, free from

charges and free from competition. But as national

economy grows, population increase and lands are

scarce, road loses its public image. Public road as

public goods is shifted become common goods, in a

way that it is still free of charges but it becomes

rivalrous in consumption. In the end it is still non

excludable but rivalrous in consumption.

Ulbrich (2003) has a term for this kind of

goods, he calls it congestible public goods. He

explained that a congestible public good is a public

good that is non-rival under moderate use but

becomes congested under heavy use (Ulbrich,

2003). With congestion, each additional user

imposes costs on the other users (Weimer and

Vining, 1999; Hyman 2002; Bruce, 2001).

Congested public goods are sometimes also called

ambient public goods (Weimer and Vining, 1999).

The main problem in the utilization is traffic jam,

road users would take more time to arrive at their

destination. This problem has caused additional

sacrifice to road user more than they have already

spent. Time, energy, patience, gasoline, social

needs are wasted.

Solutions

There are various solutions to this problem,

effective solutions are proposed:

1. Implementing floating tariff for road users. Eric A. Morris (in Mankiw, 2009)

proposed a unique way to implement this

solution. He proposes a system to charge

floating fee based on how congested the road

is. If the road is in normal capacity then no

tariff is charged. As users fill roads, usually at

peak hours, system increases fee proportional

to degree of traffic jam. In doing so will limit

users from using certain crowded roads. Users

will be faced with option whether to use the

road or not. If users think that paid fee is worth

it, then they may use the road.

Morris argued that to many people, this

sounds like a scheme by mustache-twirling

bureaucrats and their academic apologists to

fleece drivers out of their hard-earned cash.

Why should drivers have to pay to use roads

their tax dollars have already paid for? Wont the remaining free roads be swamped as

drivers are forced off the tolled roads? Wont the working-class and poor be the victims here,

as the tolled routes turn into Lexus lanes? And besides, adopting this policy would mean

listening to economists, and who wants to do

that?

2. Implementing gasoline tax Mankiw (2009) proposed another policy

that responds to the problem of road

congestion that is the tax on gasoline. Gasoline

is a complementary good to driving: An

increase in the price of gasoline tends to

reduce the quantity of driving demanded.

Therefore, a gasoline tax reduces road

congestion. A gasoline tax, however, is an

imperfect solution, because it affects other

decisions besides the amount of driving on

congested roads. For example, the gasoline tax

discourages driving on uncongested roads,

even though there is no congestion externality

for these roads. Another means similar are

cumulative vehicle tax.

3. Optimizing mass rapid public transportation By implementing this it also require extra

effort to changes basic mentality or paradigm

of citizens who used to drive their private car.

This last solution offers better outcomes in the

future as congested road theoretically

nonexistent, reduce in air pollution and many

nature sustainability advantage.

There are maybe many other solutions

regarding public road issues but because of

limitation of this paper, these solutions are enough.

Conclusion

Public road is a media for people to do their

social and economic needs. Its characteristic as public good have made public road as dependable

as ever. People need to understand that even public

road is limited. Self-constraint and optimization of

public transport are two effective ways to reduce

congestant. Self-constrain reduce prestige or

lifestyle that leads to over consumerism as well as

tragedy of commons and effective public

transportation will generate sustainable resource.

As this problem still continues the new

governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, is going to

implement Electronic Road Pricing in the near

future. Monorail, subway, public bus are among

other solutions being offered to citizens. Hopefully

this ear-relaxing news is able to tackle congestion

problem.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good.

Retrieved 1 November 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_com

mons. Retrieved 1 November 2013.

Donijo Robbins. 2005. Handbook of Public Sector

Economics. Marcel Dekker/CRC Press

LLC.

N. Gregory Mankiw. 2011. Principles of

Microeconomics 6th Edition. South-

Western Cengage Learning : USA.

Hardin, G. (1968-12-13). "The Tragedy of the

Commons". Science (AAAS) 162 (3859) :

1243 1248.doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.

PMID 5699198. Retrieved 1 November

2013.