Lebaran Holiday and Mass Transportation

In recent days, people in Indonesia are heavily crowding the main access roads to their hometown or village where they were originally born. In Indonesia the term of that activity is called Mudik. In this activity, people around big cities like Jakarta, Surabaya or Bandung in Java Island, or Medan and Lampung in Sumatra Island are moving toward the small villages or countries where they started their life.

To support this activity, they use some kind of vehicles like buses, cars, and motorbikes. For those who don't have enough wealth to buy cars, usually ride the motorbikes their own to go, bringing the whole family member, usually three people in a motorbike, and also some stuffs they want to share after arriving home at the village. The kind of people like this usually say as a reason that they don't want to bother the other families by having a ride while going around the village to visit other big family members. One more thing is that they want to show off for what they have had while they work at the big city. That's why when Lebaran comes, we can see many modified motorbikes are like buzzing bees on the street. Sometimes they also have a little bit of a "contest" with the other riders when going for home village, just to show that their bikes are the best among the others.

Actually the government of Indonesia has already told and warned the people who want to go back to the village by motorbike, not to do that because the risks are even higher than going on by bus or the other kind of mass transportation. However, the more people are warned, the bigger courage the have. So, even the government doesn't agree with the people go home village by motorbike, they can do nothing except providing a system of guarding them from start to finish of the trip. Usually it is done at H-7 until H+7 of Lebaran Day.

The government wants someday the people who go back to their homevillage for Lebaran Day, will use mass transportation like buses or trains, because it's cheap and much safer for the family. That's why there is a limitation for those who want to go homevillage by motorbike, only one person can ride the motorbike. The wife and the kids go by the bus following the group of the villagers going with the guardian from police department.

Some people said that they actually want to go homevillage by mass transportation. However, the continuous crime such as pickpocket until robbery make them withdraw from the idea of using mass transportation, and tempt to use their own vehicles even it will be more harmfull coz usually they put too many stuffs to go with, and put the family members until the bike can't run well.

This is only a tradition of Indonesian people, to celebrate Lebaran in their homevillage, even some of them are not muslim. But this tradition last for years, so we hope that someday there will be an improvement of mass transportation, especially in safety from crimes, so the people will love to put their motorbikes or even cars home, and use mass transportation provided by the government with enjoy.