Extended

Travel demand restrictions are increasingly popular to disrupt traffic jams in heavily congested urban areas. The policy is easy to implement while the reduction in congestion level is perceived to be substantial. We test this hypothesis by evaluating the impact of odd-even policies on congestion levels in Jakarta, one of the most severely congested cities in the world. Using hourly travel time data at road segment level drawn from GoogleMaps, the odd-even policy reduces the travel time by 3% on average after a month of its implementation. The effect is higher during weekends and at afternoon peak-hour windows. However, the effect vanishes after the third week of policy introduction. Our results then shed an indication of ineffective transport demand restrictions in Jakarta.