The Indonesian government through the Sarana Multi Infrastruktur (SMI) plans to issue the tender process for the Jakarta airport rail Link project through a public private partnership in August this year.

In March 2012, AECOM was selected to prepare the feasibility study.

The total project investment is estimated at Rp27 trillion (US$2.27 billion).

The express train PPP project will link Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in East Jakarta. It is expected that the project will be operational by 2019.

The line will travel through five stations: Halim Station, Manggarai Station, Dukuh Atas Station, Tanah abang Station, and Pluit Station. The train is estimated to reach a pace of 135 km per hour.

According to Hanggoro Budi Wiryawan, the traffic and transportation director at the Transportation Ministry's railway directorate general, around 19 international and domestic investors are interested in the project. These include several international construction companies from China, South Korea, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Indonesia's authorized rail operator, state-owned Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), is assured a role. Presumably the project tender will offer KAI as a partner.

The Soekarno-Hatta Airport (SHIA), which serves Jakarta, is the world's 9th busiest and the third busiest airport in Asia by trade body Airports Council International. SHIA moves more passengers than Dubai, New York-JFK, Singapore or Hong Kongand.

In 2013, Soekarno-Hatta handled a total of 62.1 million passengers, a 3.7 percentage point growth from the previous year (60 million).

The government expects that the total number of passengers of Soekarno-Hatta will have increased to 80 million per year by 2019 or 2020. The airport is currently undergoing a large renovation, terminals I and II are being renovated to enlarge passenger capacity to 18 and 19 million people respectively.