During the Christmas-New Year holidays, Bali expects another influx of visitors. In Indonesia, this period is called 'Nataru.' This year's forecast is over a million visits. In addition to tourists, local travelers from Java and other islands will come—many in personal vehicles, which means an increased load on the roads.
To avoid past traffic failures, the police and city services have decided to take proactive measures. In the coming weeks, there will be more traffic inspectors on the streets, and traffic regulation will be reinforced to keep flow from coming to a standstill.
Denpasar's Transport Agency confirmed that staff have already been deployed to areas where traffic jams are most frequent, including for preliminary training. The head of the agency, I Ketut Sriawan, identified problem areas such as the Sanur district, the Living World Denpasar shopping center, and several other shopping centers in the city.
According to him, a joint 'Nataru team' has been deployed at key locations, comprising the police, local patrol service, army, public order service, transportation association, and regional transport planning agency.
Simultaneously, temporary traffic schemes are being introduced. For example, U-turns on the Ngurah Rai highway are closed until the New Year: U-turns will only be possible at the nearest intersections with a traffic light. In central Denpasar, near Living World Denpasar, the traffic flow has also been changed: when exiting the shopping center, drivers must turn left, to the east, and exit onto Niti Mandala Renon Avenue.
Traffic lights are also under constant control. If necessary, they will be manually switched to 'untangle' bottlenecks and expedite the flow of accumulated vehicles.
This should make it easier for tourists to travel from the airport to the Kuta, Legian, Seminyak, and Sanur areas, as well as from Canggu, Ubud, Kuta, and Sanur to the road network of the Bukit Peninsula—towards Jimbaran and Uluwatu.
It seems that scenes of gridlock, when tourists were walking to the airport with suitcases, still haunt the services like nightmares—and this time they are determined to prevent a recurrence.
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