What is DAMRI? Why would DAMRI be asociated with barbeque anyway? I’m sorry if the tittle of my article here is a little bit weird, strange, or even irrelevant. I’m not going to tell you story about crazy men eating buses nor buses being burnt down by angry people in a demonstration-against-government or anything like that. What I’m going to tell you is just about my visit to the transportation museum in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah on a sunny Sunday morning, 29 May 2011 at 09:00. At first, I wanted to visit a museum near my house, Basuki Abdullah Art Museum on Keuangan street at Cilandak. What makes it special is that the museum was originally a house, not just any random house. It was the house where the maestro used to live. I had searched all over the internet informations about that museum and it should be open everyday except on Mondays but unfortunately, that museum was on renovation so I had to find another interesting museum to be reviewed, and that was Transportation Museum since I frequently use bus as a daily transportation for me. I know and I believe that even buses and each kinds of public transportions here bears its own unique history, interesting stories that should be told but somehow kept untold and transportation museum is the right place to rediscover uniqueness of each of them.
The museum itself is different from most museums where you can just find artefacts being displayed on dark room with little amount of lighting. It makes great place in your must-visit-list this holiday. What makes it interestingly different is it has two kinds of show room; the outdoor and the indoor showroom. For those who are intersted to take a look at how the transportations in the past look like, or just want to take a peek on the interior of each transportations, the outdoor museum might be a satisfying place to make it happens. You can see Garuda DC-9 PK-NGT, which used to serve ASEAN-Australia flight service, an orange rescue team (SAR) helicopter, locomotives, buses and cars in their real-life size. Don’t get me wrong, the indoor showroom is also as interesting as the outdoor showroom. Oh no, don’t imagine your average indoor museums, which are sometimes dark and somewhat gloomy. The lighting here is infact actually pretty good. No, it doesn’t mean that it consume very much electricity just for the lighting, it take good use of the natural lighting, the sun (lol) as it has wide windows with many glass doors inside. In the indoor showroom, you can find miniatures and pictures or even diorama about the transports and it also is a great place to find out tales of each of the transportations where they were more than interesting just-for-show photo background or funny display museums. The museum is even multifunctional, it can also be used as meeting room and it makes a great venue for special occasions. When I visited the museum, I saw elementary school students with their white and red uniform accompanied by their teacher celebrating graduation day. The museum is divided into four modules or sections, which are central transpostation section where you can find more about onthel bicycle, andong, becak, cikar and many other manual transportation, their history, their uniqueness, and even their important roles in the past. The other three sections are the water transportation section, which is about great tales boats and ships, air transportation module where you can find musch about planes and helicopters that once ruled the sky, and last but not least land transportation section where you can enjoy the awsomeness of some great cars, buses and motorbikes that used to roamed the streets, which you can’t find the on the streets no more but in movies and here.
In this article, I’d like to tell you more about DAMRI. Like my previous question, actually, what is DAMRI? If you think that DAMRI is just somekind or a type of bus, or just bus that helps us go or leave the airport, think again. DAMRI is a public transportation company that was very important in the past. Even though it is still exist until today, it doesn’t play major role in our daily transportation service, one of the function of DAMRI today is as a transportion to go to or to leave the airport, like I’ve said before. Sorry if I go out of topic, I remembered the first time I took DAMRI to go home fom the Soekarno-Hatta Airport with my friend, Fajar as eleventh grade senior highschool students after our arrival from our study trip in Jogjakarta. We had to take the bus because (sadly) our parents couldn’t pick us up at the airport. That time, the price of the ticket to ride the bus was 25.000 Rupiah, worth the service and the comfortabilities we accepted. Back to our previous topic, is DAMRI stands for something? Right, DAMRI is an accronime which stands for “Djawatan Angkoetan Motor Repoeblik Indonesia”. But, do you know that DAMRI has it’s own long history, and it once played important role in the colonial period towards independence period? Yeah, DAMRI isn’t just as simple as daily street-roamer bus.
Like I’ve stated before, DAMRI stands for “Djawatan Angkoetan Motor Repoeblik Indonesia” and was founded and inaugurated by “Makloemat Kementerian Perhoeboengan RI No.01/DAMRI/46 “ in 25 November 1946, as an organizer of public transport and goods delivery transportation. In it’sdevelopment as “Perusahaan Umum” (Perum), or public company in english, the name DAMRI is still used as a brand mark of a “Badan Usaha Milik Negara” (BUMN), or state-owned company, and still exist today consistently serves as a service provider for public transportation and goods delivery service using buses and trucks If we intent to seek DAMRI’s history furthermore, the foundation of what we called DAMRI today had existed from the Japanese colonial period in 1943. At that time, there were two transportation companies. The two companies were JAWA UNYU ZIGYOSHA which served as goods delivery service using trucks and cikars (cart), and dan ZIDOSHA SOKYOKU which served as public transportation using motorized vehicles such as buses. In 1945, the year when Indonesians celebrating their independence, under ministry of transportation (Kementerian Perhoeboengan), the two transportation company was natonalized, hence JAWA UNYU ZIGYOSHA was renamed “DJAWATAN PENGANGKOETAN” and ZIDOSHA SOKYOKU was renamed “DJAWATAN ANGKOETAN DARAT”. In order to maximilize the operational of transportation, the two nationalized transportation companies merged and named “Djawatan Angkoetan Darat Bermotor” (DADB) under “Panitia Angkoetan Darat” (PAD) / Land Transport Comitee. Finally, in 25 November 1946 based on “Makloemat Menteri Perhoeboengan RI No.01/DAM/46”, DADB once again renamed and the name given was..... “Djawatan Angkoetan Motor Repoeblik Indonesia” or DAMRI (Yay!). The main mission of DAMRI, once again, (I hope you still remember) is to organize or as a service provider of land transportation. This noble task made DAMRI played an active role in maintaining the independence of Indonesia against Dutch military agression in Java.
Was DAMRI really that important? Of course, although DAMRI that time wasn’t similar to today’s DAMRI. One of most important and interesting points to remember, is that the first armada of DAMRI wasn’t simply just buses and trucks. Guess what, other than buses and trucks, DAMRI took good use of cikars too. What is cikar anyway? Cikar means “Cattle-Drawn Carriage”. The carriage was 515 cm in length, 200 cm in width, and 275 cm in height. These cikars was operated in 1945 until 1950. In 1946, the cikars was functionalized as military logistic transport in Banyumas, Surabaya and Mojokerto. Maybe now, you’ve already know what the tittle of this means. That’s right, after transporting goods or the stocks ran out, the cattle was released from its carriage and......slaughtered and then cooked (or barbecued) as food. To erase the trace, the wooden carriage was burnt down to ashes. Since motorized vehicles massal produced and used as massal transportation, the cikars had seen better days and leave their task to motorized vehicles. The era of cikar was finally over.
Until now, DAMRI has a network of service spread almost throughout the territory of the Republic of Indonesia. In the normal course of business now, DAMRI not only organize urban transportation service, transportation between cities, airports special transport, freight travel, package transportation (logistics) and transport pioneer, but it already goes DAMRI by opening a regional cross-border transport services. Especially in cross-border transportation service beginning with the opening of the route Pontianak-Kuching (Malaysia) some years ago, starting from the date of October 26, 2008 has been expanded to Brunei Darussalam (Pontianak-Kuching-Brunei Darussalam). In the near future will soon be followed by opening the service to Papua New Guinea (Jayapura-Vanimo) and East Timor (Kupang-Dili).
As we know DAMRI in any era is also a means of transportation of goods other than as just as passenger transportation. It can be seen on the DAMRI truck American-made Internal Harpenter brand. This truck was operated in 1963, the same year of its manufacturation. Unfortunately, there were only a miniature course here. For bus passengers, bus DAMRI next to me this is an old bus DAMRI that I find most similar to the DAMRI bus nowadays. Which is in the photo is DAMRI branded TATA Bus type LP, 1210.E and was made in India. This bus has a length of 9.5 meters, 2.4 meters wide and 2.9 meters high and contains between 30-40 passengers and can be classified as medium-size buses. Buses began operating in 1978 in Surabaya, Semarang and Bandung. In this photo, can be seen this bus route is Cicaheum-Cibeureum in Bandung. My visit to this museum makes me yearn to ride this bus again as a DAMRIDER and makes me want to explore about DAMRI further. It’s a valuable memory that I wouldn’t forget.
Cheers,
Reza
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