Jakarta. China has shown interest in building an automated rail transit in Indonesia’s new capital Nusantara, although the city’s authority body refused to reveal the name of the Chinese investor in question.

Work is underway at the new capital to attract institutions from home and abroad to build the city’s transportation system ranging from air taxis to trackless trams. According to Nusantara’s capital authority body, the railless tram will likely involve a Chinese firm. However, the body chose to keep the Chinese tech provider anonymous for the time being.

“The [traditional] trams usually have rails, but this [automated rail transit] does not. It uses sensors and follows road markings. So it will not interfere with other modes of transportation,” Mohammed Ali Berawi, the deputy for digital and green transformation at the Nusantara authority body, told reporters in Jakarta on Friday.

“We will work with a foreign technology provider. They are from China, but we can’t reveal the name [of the investor],” Ali said.

Speaking to the Jakarta Globe via text later that day, Ali added: “[The automated rail transit] uses sensor light detection and ranging [Lidar] technology and a global positioning system [GPS]. ART is a trackless tram or an autonomous tram.”

China has been investing heavily in Indonesia. Government data shows China became Indonesia’s second-largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in January-September 2023. Indonesia attracted almost $5.6 billion in Chinese FDI over the said period. As part of China’s Belt and Road initiative colossal infrastructure project, Beijing helped Indonesia build Southeast Asia’s first high-speed train, popularly known as Whoosh.

As of Nov. 20, the body already received 19 letters of intent from Chinese institutions who expressed interest in taking part in the capital relocation project. About 172 out of the total 305 letters of intent came from domestic investors. However, a letter of intent is still miles away before they can reach an actual agreement. The authority body and the interested investor still need to go through one-on-one meetings and feasibility studies. Ali also said tech-related investment in Nusantara mostly came from foreign investors as they are the ones who own the technology.

Although not much is known about the project in Nusantara, the developer behind the railless tram project in China is the mass transit manufacturer CRRC. The CRRC first unveiled the trackless tramway project --the Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit-- in Zhuzhou in 2017, claiming it to be the world’s first railless train. According to Xinhua, the developer said that the system only cost a fifth of a traditional tram system.

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