Jakarta Builds Expanded MRT Concourse, Supports Transit-Oriented Development

RRI.CO.ID, Jakarta – The Hotel Indonesia (HI) Roundabout is a well-known landmark at the heart of Jakarta, Indonesia's largest city and one of the world's largest. Named after a hotel nearby built to welcome guests of the 1962 Asian Games, it features sculptures of a man and a woman waving hands over a pedestal known as the "Welcome Monument" (Monumen Selamat Datang), surrounded by a giant fountain.

Just nearby the crowded roundabout is an underground structure under construction, built to welcome more passengers of the city's metro system. It is expected to be a crowded structure to hold commercial activations, welcome arriving metro passengers to the roundabout, and support a transit-oriented development (TOD).

The structure is actually an extended concourse of MRT Jakarta's Bundaran HI Bank Jakarta Station. Located 18 meters below M.H. Thamrin Avenue and Bundaran HI Astra station of the bus rapid transit system Transjakarta, the 4,400-square-meter concourse is just north of the roundabout.

The concourse will be connected to two building complexes. One is the Plaza Indonesia luxury shopping center and the Grand Hyatt Jakarta hotel above. Another is Wisma Nusantara, built in the 1960s as the first office skyscrapers in Jakarta, as well as Pullman Hotel Jakarta Thamrin next to it.

President Director of Integrasi Transit Jakarta (ITJ), Yulham Ferdiansyah Roestam, said in Jakarta on Wednesday that the structure is being built to support an increase in MRT's passengers once the North-South Line extension is completed in the coming years. ITJ is a Jakarta provincially-owned company tasked with developing TODs across the city province.

"It is projected that there would be an increase of more than 6,000 passengers at a single station... there are already 11,000 (passengers) at one station. So, an increase of 6,000 means we have to be able to handle 17,000," Roestam said during a session of the MRT Jakarta Fellowship Program in Jakarta on Wednesday, August 19, 2026.

The North-South Line, as of 2026, is the only MRT Jakarta line stretching from Lebak Bulus near Jakarta's southern border to the HI Roundabout. An extension to the city's historic Old Town (Kota Tua) in the north is underway.

The concourse will be completed with two entrances, each in the east and west, complete with escalators and an elevator on the west. The existing elevator at Bundaran HI Astra bus station will be extended directly into the extended concourse.

Inside the concourse is 24 multifunction area that will be leased for commercial activities. Head of Commercial Department at MRT Jakarta, Ricky Agung Kresna Putra, added that there will be an activation space for events such as art exhibition, workshop, or even product launch showcase.

“We want this concept to focus more on a more comprehensive commercial ecosystem, so that it can become a meeting point for users... We want to create a different experience, drawing on the details that already exist within the station,” Ricky said.

Roestam said the construction progress of the extended concourse is at 21.46 percent as of July, "slightly ahead of the schedule". It is set to be inaugurated in June 2027, coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Jakarta.

Jakarta has developed several TODs, all connected to Jakarta MRT stations, and developments around HI Roundabout is one of them. Another TODs in development is in Dukuh Atas, where the government is planned to built a pedestrian deck to connect up to four transit lines in the future, and in Blok M, where a development is done near an MRT station and a bus terminal.