TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Sections near Purwakarta in the Cipularang toll road, a toll road connecting Bandung and Jakarta, is vulnerable to collapse because those locations contain soft ground, according to Ade Sjafrudin, a road expert from the Civil Engineering Faculty of the Bandung Institute of Technology.
"When water hit those areas, the ground will get soft and erode," he said on Saturday, January 25, 2014.
On Friday, toll road operator PT Jasa Marga closed the section of the toll road from Jakarta to Bandung following the collapse of the road in Kilometer 72. In the meantime, the asphalt of the road along Kilometer 60 also collapsed for around 12 to 60 centimeters.
Previously, Ade said, a section at Kilometer 90 also collapsed and locations of collapse-prone sections in the toll road can be seen in a geological map.
Ade further said that during the long rainy season like now, a large amount of water seeps through the ground around Cipularang toll road.
He added that according to the information that he gathered, heaps of sand located below the roll road are also likely to move. He suspected that land condition in those two locations, Kilometer 72 until Kilometer 90 are not too different.
Ade opined that PT Jasa Marga should have checked condition of the land in the toll road, especially the one near Purwakarta. He also said that the collapse did not only happen in one lane but also in the oncoming lane, up to the areas outside the toll road.
ANWAR SISWADI
