One of the classic problems that arises as a country urbanises is traffic congestion. As more and more people pack into urban areas, and especially as urban sprawl generates large commuter zones around urban cores, road usage often outstrips capacity. While traffic jams are a familiar problem for people in all of Indonesia's rapidly growing urban areas, they are particularly a challenge for people in the Greater Jakarta metropolitan area, where urban sprawl is most extensive.

The Jakarta metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan area in Indonesia, both in terms of land size and economic magnitude. It consists of an urban agglomeration that stretches over all of one province (Jakarta) and parts of two others (Banten and West Java), and includes Tangerang city, South Tangerang city, Tangerang district, Depok, Bogor city, Bekasi city, Bogor district and Bekasi district, with a total area of about 6,700 km2 (BPS 2023). It also accounts for approximately 22.6 per cent of the national urban population, around 10 per cent of the national population and 23.6 per cent of national gross domestic product (GDP) (Roberts et al. 2019: 57; Yudhistira, Indriyani et al. 2019). The metropolitan area's per capita regional GDP is almost twice that of Indonesia's per capita GDP (BPS 2023). Over recent years, the demographic and economic weight of the Jakarta metropolitan area has been driven especially by the areas located outside its core. This urban periphery around Jakarta experienced the highest growth in urban population of any type of urban area in Indonesia between 2004 and 2016, with an annual population growth rate of 4.8 per cent per year; in contrast, the Jakarta core grew at only 1.4 per cent per year (Roberts et al. 2019: 63). While Jakarta's core has been relatively stable, urban settlements in Jakarta's periphery grew at 9.1 per cent per year between 2000 and 2014 (ibid.: 64), indicating considerable conversion of agricultural and vacant land into built-up areas.

Growth of this massive urban agglomeration has generated a major problem with road traffic congestion. According to the 2023 edition of the TomTom Traffic Index, Jakarta is the ninth most congested city in Asia.