Jakarta-Bandung railway helps Indonesia take the fast track: media

China's first overseas high-speed railway project, connecting Jakarta and Bandung in Indonesia, is expected to ease the lingering congestion problem on Java Island, increase productivity and promote more balanced development across the region, BBC reported.

The 142-kilometer line has a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour, reducing travel time between the two cities from more than 3 hours to just 40 minutes.

Tegalluar station, the terminal station of the Jakarta-Bandung high speed railway, is located on the outskirts of West Java province's capital city Bandung. Local people said the surrounding area has been included in the government's development zone planning.

Nearly 90 percent of the railway project is now completed, and it is expected to be commercially operational by June of next year.

The island of Java, where Bandung is located, accounts for only 7 percent of Indonesia's total area but about half of its population, with extremely crowded freight and passenger traffic.

"In the 1990s, it took a whole day to get to Jakarta... but the time is now about 40 minutes by taking the new bullet train, which is almost unimaginable," the report quoted a local of Bandung.

A World Bank study on China's high-speed railway showed that the railway increased business productivity by an average of 10 percent along the route.

As the fourth most populous country in the world, Indonesia is of rapid economic development with great prospects for infrastructure construction.

The whole of Southeast Asia, and even the developing countries around the world will also have the demand for high-speed rail construction in the coming decades.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, minister of finance for Indonesia, said the country has an obvious need in infrastructure, and a high-speed rail meet people's demand of mass movement between cities, which is exactly something Indonesia lacks.