The announcement was made at a groundbreaking ceremony in downtown Jakarta. Dono Boestami, managing director of MRT Jakarta, also confirmed that preferred bidders will soon be announced for the two remaining underground construction packages, together with the three contracts for the elevated section of the line.

Jakarta’s governor, Joko Widodo, said he hopes the entire first line of the metro will be complete by 2017. The line will have six underground and seven elevated stations. Services will initially operate at five-minute headways and ridership is expected to reach 420,000 passengers per day after three years of operation.