As Bali welcomes in the 2026 peak season, here at The Bali Sun, we are bracing for traffic chaos! Returning holidaymakers to Bali will be preparing for sun, sea, sand, and pockets of gridlock.
Hope is at hand; however, new sea taxi services are set to launch soon.
Bali has been discussing the introduction of sea taxis for more than two years. With the island’s road network struggling to support the increase in vehicles, leaders are working to create a sea taxi system that would help remove some of the tourist traffic on the island’s busiest roads.
Badung Regency, which is home to Bali’s top tourist hotspots, including Uluwatu, Legian, Seminyak, Canggu, and Uluwatu, is home to one million vehicles, despite the area only technically being home to 500,000 residents. This helps offer some sense of scale of the issue.
With the peak season for travel just getting underway in Bali this month, leaders have been talking about solutions to the traffic crisis once again. Bali’s Deputy Governor, I Nyoman Giri Prasta, said that sea routes via water taxi services are one solution to reduce congestion in the Canggu area, especially from the direction of I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport.
He told reporters, “The sea toll (sea taxi route) is a must, it has been planned to be implemented, so that people going to Canggu from Ngurah Rai Airport will go directly to Canggu and no longer have to go by land.”
He highlighted that work is happening around the clock to help tackle the situation but that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Deputy Governor Prasta was previously the Regent of Badung and has extensive experience in this issue. He noted that the Canggu Shortcut, for example, is one of the island’s most congested areas, but that the road cannot be widened due to temples and shrines that are close to the route.
He explained that work is underway to help create more shortcuts where appropriate and possible, but that the sea taxi option will go a long way in helping both locals and tourists navigate the province.
Deputy Governor Prasta explained, “Since I took office, I’ve only been able to complete one shortcut, and even then, it hasn’t been optimal because the road is already like that, and it’s impossible to widen it because there’s a Hindu place of worship, a stone carving, and it can’t be moved.”
He confirmed that to support sea taxi services, the government plans to build several stopover points at several strategic locations.
The coastal boundary will be widened to 120 meters above sea level. Deputy Governor Prasta explained that these stopover points will also function as a breakwater so that sea waves do not directly hit the coastline along which the sea taxi route passes.
The provincial leader confirmed that the development of sea taxis would not replace urgent work needed to improve Bali’s road network.
He concluded, “We will make improvements to road facilities, one of which is communicating with the central government for underpasses. Astungkara will be in Jimbaran this year, and in the future, we will also have one in Tohpati.”
Some private sea taxi services are already available for tourists. For example, GoBoat’s Uluwatu-Canggu and Canggu-Uluwatu sea taxi service helps cut travel time between the two popular vacation destinations down to just 35 minutes.
In a car or even on a motorcycle, this journey takes at least 90 minutes by road, and upwards of three hours if driving during peak traffic hours.
Provincial leaders have not published a detailed plan of the proposed sea taxi network, but have told the media previously that the routes should first focus on improving connectivity between Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport, directly to Canggu, with Nusa Penida coming in hot as a potential second destination in the development plans.
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