The Deli-Atjeh railway connection controversy (1912–1916) was the dispute between the Netherlands Indies Government, the Cultuurraad (Cultivation Council) of the East Coast of Sumatra plantation region and the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij (Deli Railway Company) over how the government steam tramway of Atjeh — the Atjeh-tram — should be completed and connected to the Deli railway network, and where the seaport of the combined system should stand on the Aru Bay. The whole controversy was reviewed by J. Roest in his article De spoorwegverbinding tusschen Deli, Atjeh en de Aroebaai (1916).
The question
The Government had decided to continue the Atjeh tram from Kwala Simpang north of Langsa through the young plantation district of Tamiang to Besitang, and from there to the Aru Bay. The end point chosen was Telok Taboehan, where the bay offered water deep enough for coastal steamers, sheltered by the island Poeloe Sembilan. The plan rested on the assumption that the dredging works at Belawan, the existing ocean port of the Deli region, might fail, and that the Aru Bay would then become the ocean harbour of the whole East Coast.
Schadee, a former administrator of the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij and former member of the Local Council of the plantation region, opposed this in an open letter to Beyerman. The Minister, he argued, had been wrongly informed: the existing import and export trade of Tamiang lay not in the Aru Bay but at Pangkalan Brandan, and the greater depth of the Sembilangeul had never yet drawn trade away from the existing harbour places. The connection that was actually needed, he said, was between Besitang and Pangkalan Brandan, which could be built cheaply along the level country — estimates spoke of f 800,000 for the branch lines — while the army engineers (Genie) put their own plan at f 510,000.
The Cultuurraad debates
At the meeting of the Cultuurraad of 26 September 1912, Schadee moved that the Council regret that the plan for connecting the Atjeh tram — with the harbour of Telok Taboehan in the Aru Bay — to the lines of the Deli Company had been fixed without the Council having been able to examine it, and that execution should be stayed until the plan had been tested against the interests of the plantation region. Beyerman proposed to delete the words with the harbour of Telok Taboehan in the Aru Bay from the motion. The unamended motion was rejected by 18 votes to 4; the amended motion was passed by 19 votes to 3.
At the meeting of 20 February 1913, reported in the Deli Courant, the Council gave its advice on the proposed continuation of the Atjeh tram via Besitang to Telok Taboehan and its connection with the Deli railway network. The chief of construction (chef van aanleg) of the Atjeh tram defended the eastern trace for the connection — 800 metres longer but technically preferable — and the direct connection Besitang–Tandjong Slamat as the shortest road: only along it, he claimed, could Kota Radja and Medan be connected in two days. Schadee demonstrated that, given the speeds of the two systems (20 and 30 kilometres per hour respectively), the difference in running time between the two routes was only twenty minutes, falling to thirteen if speeds were raised. He therefore proposed to prefer the connection with Pangkalan Brandan, whose Chinese kedeh (shop houses) at Kwala Simpang — about eighty in number, nearly all branches of those at Brandan — took one third of Brandan’s import trade; the value of that trade he put at not less than one million guilders per year. His motion to that effect was carried by 28 votes to 1.
Governor Van der Plas of the East Coast of Sumatra, however, answered that a parallel line through a new district could never disadvantage the plantation region, that a good harbour such as Telok Taboehan was of more value to the hinterland than a bad one such as Pangkalan Brandan, and that competition would always favour the users.
The Government decisions of 1913
By the Government decisions of 17 June 1913 No. 59 and 16 October 1913 No. 25, funds were granted for the continuation of the Atjeh steam tram from Kwala Simpang to the boundary between Tamiang and Langkat, and from that boundary to Besitang, while the Aru Bay plan — the connection Besitang–Aru Bay — was maintained. A northern, cheaper branch from Besitang via Pangkalan Soesoe to Telok Taboehan was authorised.
The Cultuurraad then proposed to link the Atjeh and Deli tram networks by a line Besitang–Pangkalan Brandan, to be built, if possible, by the Deli Company itself. A state-built broad-gauge line directly from Pangkalan Brandan to Telok Taboehan was considered but dropped; the company was expected to build the connection itself.
The shift from Telok Taboehan to Pangkalan Soesoe, 1915
In connection with the advice of the engineers Kraus and De Jongh and the hopeful first results of the suction dredger Java in the Belawan channel, the original plans for a first-class harbour near Telok Taboehan were set aside; of the grand schemes only a modest coast-harbour installation remained. Preliminary talks had already been held to acquire a site for personnel housing on Pulau Sembilan — land that the Native Self-Government (Inlandsch Zelfbestuur) of Langkat had leased in concession to the Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij for oil winning — and f 150,000 had been placed on the draft budget for 1916 for a beginning of the works.
The objections to Telok Taboehan proved decisive: the site lay in a low, marshy coast strip far from any settlement, would need expensive sanitation works before it could be lived in, and all goods unloaded there would have to travel the stretch to Pangkalan Soesoe without any loading or unloading along the way, through uninhabitable wilderness — although the roadbed of that stretch, at a cost of f 200,000, had by then already been completed. The choice therefore fell on Pangkalan Soesoe, where the Bataafsche had a large establishment with a pier and where established trade and shipping already existed. The harbour design there was simpler than the one originally made for Telok Taboehan, and easily extensible; the lines of the Atjeh tram and of the Deli Company would each separately join the lines of the storage sheds.
The outcome
By the end of 1915 the Government had provisionally abandoned a state-built connection between the Atjeh tram and the Deli railway, so that the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij would build its long-desired line Besitang–Pangkalan Brandan itself; whether the short through connection Besitang–Tandjong Slamat would ever be realised was, in Roest’s judgement, doubtful. The Deli Company had not been able to prevent the Besitang–Aru Bay connection and the building of a harbour on the bay, but it could largely neutralise the threatened damage to itself and to the harbour of Pangkalan Brandan by its own projected connecting lines.
Significance
The controversy shows how railway policy, plantation interests and harbour politics were entangled in the economy of the East Coast of Sumatra in the years before the First World War. To the history of Atjeh it is important because it fixed the northern course of the Atjeh-tram to the Aru Bay and created the harbour of Pangkalan Soesoe, through which the plantation districts of Tamiang and the Atjeh frontier were opened.
See Also
- De spoorwegverbinding tusschen Deli, Atjeh en de Aroebaai
- J. Roest
- Schadee
- Beyerman
- Van der Plas
- Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij
- Atjeh-tram
- Aroebai
- Telok Taboeban
- Pangkalan Brandan
- Pangkalan Soesoe
- Besitang
- Cultuurraad
Source
De spoorwegverbinding tusschen Deli, Atjeh en de Aroebaai, door J. Roest, in Tijdschrift voor het Binnenlandsch Bestuur, Deel XLIX, Afl. 6 (Batavia, December 1916), pp. 464–478.