Bali has confirmed that it will be deploying a new Traffic Jam Team, which will be tasked with reducing traffic congestion in the province’s worst-affected areas and, perhaps more importantly, improving road safety.
Bali has one of the worst road safety records in all of Indonesia, with dozens of traffic collision-related deaths and hundreds more injuries reported every year.
The Bali Police Chief Inspector General Danial Adityajaya confirmed that the new Traffic Jam Team, locally named Team Jam Urai, will be initially deployed in areas like Canggu, where traffic congestion is worsening by the day. He called for officers in the Traffic Jam Team to work to prioritize serving the community to the best of their ability while ensuring security order and supporting the positive public image of Bali’s tourism sector.
Inspector General Adityajaya shared “We are all aware that the traffic jams in Bali, especially in Canggu are increasingly a concern. Therefore, we will send a special team formed by the Traffic Directorate to overcome this so that the public and tourists can feel comfortable.”
He emphasized the importance of collaboration and cooperation between the police authorities, local communities, and road users, including tourists, to help tackle the region’s seemingly ever-present traffic congestion woes.
For the uninitiated, Bali’s traffic congestion issues are serious and worsening. Rapid tourism and commercial development across the central south of the island has outweighed the amount of investment and strategic attention given to the region’s infrastructural support systems, such as roads.
Roads that were previously only designed to cope with occasional village traffic are now contending with city-level volumes of vehicles, ranging from everyday commuter traffic to tourism taxi drivers, construction and delivery vehicles, and residential traffic movement.
In areas like Canggu, it is not uncommon for journeys that should take a matter of minutes on a clear road or in free-flowing traffic to take upwards of 45 minutes to an hour. Around sunset, the Canggu shortcuts and major roadways reach a state of gridlock.
Speaking to the media in January 2025, the Acting Regional Secretary of Badung, Ida Bagus Surya Suamba, confirmed that the authorities are looking into developing a new highway through Canggu to help tackle and support the increased number of road users in the area.
A feasibility study will be completed next year, and the road, set to be called West Gatsu Street, is anticipated to help reduce traffic congestion not only in Canggu but through to Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak to the east and to the west, towards Tanah Lot.
Suamba told reporters, “The construction of West Gatsu Road through Canggu as a continuation of the primary arterial road, which is currently not properly connected. This condition causes a narrowing which causes traffic jams on the Canggu-Tanah Lot road.”
Road safety is a huge problem that needs to be resolved in Bali. As traffic congestion increases so does the risk-potential of driver’s behaviour.
As the volume of traffic on Bali’s roads, in villages, towns, cities, and on highways, both day and night, increases, so does the number of reported collisions and fatalities.
Causalities and fatalities are reported on a daily basis in Bali and are impacting both foreign and local drivers, those in cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles.
On Saturday, 1st February, a 30-year-old Russian woman, known by her initials IB, died after a collision with a construction truck in front of Goa Lawah Temple in Klungkung Regency. Speaking to reporters the Head of Klungkung Police AKP Untung Laksono, confirmed the events of the collision to the media.
ID, who was driving a Honda Scoopy, is reported to have collided with the on-coming construction truck at around 6 pm on Saturday evening. Though she made it to hospital, she passed away at Klungkung Hospital later that night.
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