Let us see what have been written by some researches regarding trips made by women in developing countries. There are similarities in trip characteristics in developing countries, that the priority of using cars are dominated by males as husbands or head of households, particularly for households having one car. Tricia L. Brennan, in the second National Proceeding regarding woman trip issues, stated that:

If women made trip in Puebla, they made more trips with many reasons, and they depended mostly on public transport. Whereas, Angela Astrop, Crowthorne University, United Kingdom in her research regarding women trip behaviour stated that in Pune, India, society with low income relayed on cheap public transport and walking. Bicycle would become essential transport means for individual, but women generally could not get the access for bicycle in a household because of the culture.

As the case study in Puebla Mexico, analysis of women behaviour in Palembang, Indonesia, one of developing countries showed that car ownership of the samples were 57,10% non car owner and 42,90% car owner. It meant 57,10% were “captive passanger” for public transport either for male and female. While, for priority of women using cars were 37,19%. As the case in Puebla,Mexico, women in Palembang, Indonesia also depend mostly on public transport (88.7%).

From this reality, problem of women trips in developing countries can be formulated as the following:

1. How to capture the women trip characteristics either as car users or as public transport users.
2. How is the women behaviour in utilizing public transport?
3. How women behaviour in making trips can be considered in transport planning?

Many travel diary survey formats have been developed by researchers. All we need to do is to develop analysis toward women trips characteristics. After that, some improvements on designed format can be developed, in order to capture the the purpose of women’s activity. In capturing the women behaviour in utilizing public transport, survey results in Palembang study showed that women tend to choose door to door service that can reduce walk trip, such as using becak (tricycle) and Ojek (taxi-motorcycle).

Now, after all data from women trip characteristics are obtained, government may not neglect this in planning implementation. Government might think, after all this years, there is no exception about women and we have “no problem” about that, why should we pay special attention for women trips? But, this opinion is not true. Let us see, portraits of some cities, where some becak (tricycles) or Ojek (public transport-motorcycles) or minibus (oplet, mikrolet) wait for their customers. Most of their customers are women who do not want to walk far. So, these public transports can far from the market or intersections. How can we make regulations, if we never consider these demands?

Transfer points which consider and facilitate those connecting modes (becak, ojek and oplet, and parking cars) are important to remove the congestion from the market (on street and off street).

The mentioned paradigm should be defined and formulated in such a way that it can provide finances necessary to develop a city or a region. With this regard, Law No.22 of year 1999 is not enough, but has to be accompanied by central and local government regulations (”Peraturan Pemerintah”, and “Peraturan Daerah”).

The scheme of a community based development is not only to introduce public participation in the development process, but also to encourage people in term of controlling Master Plans (land use and transport), urban planning in general, and urban infrastructure, which should reflect the integrated needs of local communities. Since these needs are sometime contradictory, and private sector participation, if not conveniently regulated can become a threat, to minimize disputes there is the need of prominent points.

Public participation in NGO can be developed further to implement innovative projects for satisfying social needs. Primary attention could be concentrated in building local community character and behaviors, social economy, and developing working groups. If these working groups can enhance people quality of life, then it is not difficult to find honest, cooperative, and hardworking persons collaborating in these groups, and qualified persons can always develop and produce innovative programs, based on social needs. We can see, however, two main problems, which stand on the way of the process implementation:

1) Can local government guarantee the implementation, which is based on the needs of a low  class working group?

2) Have local communities sufficient knowledge of their right, and are they able to get their needs fulfilled?

In order to guarantee public participation, there is the need to measure public participation and public involvement in community based development. Based on the experience of Dewan Kota NGO in Palembang, concerning a “public inquiry for Palembang strategic scenario”, mostly the society still hesitate to participate. This is related to the fact that many people believe that a public inquiry will not help to solve their problems.

Transport Regulations in developing countries are weak in many cases. Learning from developed countries is a good idea, but adopting totally the remedies from developed countries can be misleading. Regulation should be made, interactively communicated with the stakeholders in home countries. Local transport expert should detect and make a good sense. The weaknesses of regulation in developing countries are not strong in academic draft; mostly they are not based on the survey and not strong in power to put people in jail if they break the law. Both problems are rooted from the local parliament that is not competence in producing regulation.

In terms of Developing transport regulation, transport policy, and organization, the community based development as it is shown in the following figure is recommended. Why this framework is recommended? Because, in this system new approach of decision making is introduced, where stakeholder, experts and government are acknowledged as important actors. Then, they are all involved in discussion about implementation of Transport Planning (Lay out and Financial), discussions of stake holder forum regarding Transport Planning Policy, and finally in the process of adjustment with Regulation/policy.

Palembang is one of big cities in Indonesia. Inherently multimodal transport already exists, but what are the characteristics of multimodal mobility today in Palembang and in developing countries? How are the characteristics such as the share of multimodal transport compared to unimodal transport and the modes used in multimodal trips?.

In order to answer these questions, home interview data analysis was made of the Palembang city Survey (Buchari, 1998). This survey collected travel-data for 2520 household samples. Given that multimodal trips do not have sequences of services and modes further study was made of the surveys for 2004. In this way there are more observations available for some particular combinations of modes.

From data analysis the share of multimodal trips is 32.9% of all trips. If it is compared to Netherlands study case Nes (2002) which is 2.9% of all trips are multimodal, the need for multimodal trip is quite high. The car ownership is 42.9 % of 2520 respondents. After crisis in 1997, the car ownership goes even lower to 30% of respondents (Buchari, 1998).

42.71% of all trips are multimodal trips which consist of two legs, that is, two vehicle modes are used. 19.21% of multimodal trips contain three legs, only 4.8% of multimodal trips consist of four or more legs. When looking at the main mode, that is, the mode used to cover the largest distance and the longer time, paratransit or oplet (13.29%) is the most important mode accounting for 40.35% of all multimodal trips. The second mode is bus, having 38.52%. Further, tricycle or becak and walk are noticed as the important, complement mode for short distance, accounting for 9.05% and 6.98% of all multimodal trips, while, private cars only account for 1.58% of all multimodal trips.

Multimodal travel is dominant for bus, accounting for 87.88% of all bus trips. It is followed by boat, accounting for 83.33% of all boat trips and paratransit or oplet having 62.39% of all oplet’s trips. For the private modes it ranges between 1.9% for car passenger and 14.39% for car driver, motorcycle and bicycle.

To summarize, in order to know demand of multimodality, home interview survey is designed in such a way to capture the need of society in a study area. As an example, the following table will show the multimodality in Palembang.

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