Martin Jörss, Daniel E. Powell, and Christoph Wolff wrote on McKinsey Quarterly:
Bus and train systems habitually run at a loss. But public-transit agencies could lower costs and raise the quality of service by emulating best practices from around the world.

PPD, a state owned Transportation Company, running at Loss (as always, no surprise). ORGANDA (Transporter Association) was reluctant to drop fare due to gasoline dropping price at local Gas Station. They are just a few examples of our street car low productivity but by all means reflecting all of transportation provider in Indonesia.

So much in disguise if we think about transportation problem, especially in Jakarta the Metropolis City How did PT KA (State owned Train Railway Company)running at lost too every semester by watching people always in heavy packed in the train? Once my Lecturer said that,” If the Government allowed me to build my own train company, I will surely grab it! It must be profitable!” Competition is the Key. PTKA run the company aims without sense of competitiveness. They did not make subtle improvement. Just because they are no competitor at all. The existence of Competitor should be the catalyst for PTKA to be a profitable company.

Jorss,Powell, and wolff clearly stated that bus and train operators habitually run at loss. From Paris Metro to Manhattan, all share some characteristics of lack productivity and running in deficits. Deficits are all over caused by from route design, fare structure to labor related management.

For a railway transport there should be development of new privateers to make this route competitive and profitable. Bus and microbus(angkot) will be an implementation of short term strategy from each provider. It means that depreciation of vehicle is very fast, a four year depreciation, if I am not mistaken regarding to tax regulation. So every transport provider should make strategy based on that ,therefore they can well-maintained their fleets that always the voice of complaint for them to raise current fare. Whenever fleets are broken, it did not aligned with in-date company risk, strategy and operations.There is no strategy and risk management but doing efficiency by cannibalizing components from one vehicle to another without buying a new one. If it's the nature of the business, I would agree in a point to Blue Bird that being strategic focus on the image to prevent them from energy and economic crisis.