JAKARTA • Drivers in the traffic-choked roads of Indonesia's capital have been put on notice that using the city's streets is set to get more painful.

With more than 10 million motorcycles and as many as four million cars already on Jakarta's streets, the provincial government is preparing to introduce a congestion tax and push people towards using public transport.

"We want to make it painful so that it's enough of a disincentive for people to move to public transport," Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno said yesterday at a Bloomberg conference in Jakarta.

The city of about 10 million people is the epicentre of business for South-east Asia's biggest economy.

But the streets are often congested, with traffic jams a major obstacle to logistics and economic activity. To overcome the problem, the provincial government is planning an electronic road pricing (ERP) system to be rolled out in March 2019, after the first stage of an MRT already under construction is up and running.

There's no price structure yet, but it'll be "flexible" with the project going to tender in 2018, Mr Uno said. The number of vehicles in Jakarta "is completely unsustainable," he said. "We want to fix the traffic by building world class infrastructure."

BLOOMBERG