May 21, 2018
Operations officially began for an airport rail link in the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. This transit service was inaugurated by Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (born in 1961), who was president of Indonesia from 2014 to 2024. The link was built to reduce travel time between Padang, West Sumatra’s capital and largest city; and Minangkabau International Airport in the province’s Padang Pariaman Regency.
Measuring 14 miles (23 kilometers) in length, Minangkabau Express became Indonesia’s third airport rail link. The country’s first such connection was the 25-mile (40-kilometer)-long Soekarno Hatta Airport Raillink Services in the province of North Sumatra; it was inaugurated in 2013 and connects the city of Medan with Kualanamu International Airport.
The second airport rail link to be launched in Indonesia was the Soekarno-Hatta Airport Raillink Services (now known as Soekarno-Hatta Airport Commuter Line), which made its debut about five months before Minangkabau Express was introduced. Soekarno-Hatta Airport Commuter Line covers 33.7 miles (54.3 kilometers) between South Jakarta, an administrative subdivision of Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta (officially known as the Special Capital Region of Jakarta) and the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
Photo Credit: Aris Riyanto (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on Minangkabau Express, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minangkabau_Express
Transportation History 
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