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 socioeconomic 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.
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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. SouthWestern 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.