JAKARTA, Sept 10 (NNN-ANTARA) – Indonesia is set to open a new toll road linking Samarinda and Balikpapan in East Kalimantan province, designed to pass through the nation’s planned new capital city, located between those two cities next month, an official supervising the project said.
The new toll road will greatly support construction of projects in the new capital city, located in Kutai Kartanegara and Penajam Paser Utara regencies, which are located between the province’s capital of Samarinda and business city of Balikpapan.
“Currently completion of the overall toll road construction has reached 97 percent. We are optimistic that the toll road paths connecting Samboja to Samarinda can be settled in Oct this year,” Danang Parikesit, head of toll road project supervisory division at the Public Works and Housing Ministry, said.
He added that the toll road path project, linking the Samboja district in Kutai Kartanegara regency and the main path linking Balikpapan-Samarinda was almost finished as of early this month.
Besides supporting the activities to accelerate development of the new capital city, the 99.350-kilometre toll road connecting the two cities would highly benefit logistics distribution between the two cities, he said.
Operation of the new toll road that cost 9.97 trillion rupiah (about 710.8 million U.S. dollars) would cut short land trip to one hour from three or four hours via non-toll roads between the two cities.
The government planned to commence capital city relocation process next year, expecting it can be finished within four or five years. Some 466 trillion rupiah (about 33.2 billion dollars) have been allocated to finance the projects to construct the new capital city.– NNN-ANTARA