The impact of transport on regional development in Indonesia : a case study of Province of North Sumatra.

摘要

Experiences from many countries show that transport can have conflicting results onuddevelopment. This is a question as to whether the provision of roads can stimulateudthe centres to generate ripple and trickle down effects or whether they drain rawudmaterial, capital, labour and entrepreneurial talent from surrounding areas. There isudalso a hypothesis that if there is a relationship between capital formation andudeconomic growth, there must be a relationship between transport and the growth.udThis study explore this phenonmenon in depth in the context of a case study of NorthudSumatera in Indonesia.udEconomic growth factors and traffic volume data were collated from different sourcesudcovering the whole province of North Sumatera and were subjected to standardudstatistical tests. Despite the deficiencies in the data base, the findings suggest that theudpositive impact of roads on private investments, government activities andudinterregional trade is significant although roads may stimulate the concentration ofudinvestment and at the same time encourage interregional trade in the portsudsurrounding the primate city. It is also found that roads do not have a significantudinfluence on the expansion of land use.udThe findings also show that in this case, the provision of roads has an impact onudregional income but the speculation that the long term impact of roads leads to audbackwash effect from the less developed subregions appears to be true. Regionaludinequalities may be reduced in some measure when all settlements in the region canudbe accessed by vehicles in all weathers.udA simple model is . constructed to examine the relationship between the volume ofud~raffic and economic growth factors. This model is based on the gravity model. Theud/findings show that agricultural land use and population have significant contributionudto the generation of the volume of trucks and buses, respectively. Capital investmentudinfluences significantly on the generation of the volume of cars and trucks. Despiteudthe level of significance, population makes the the smallest contributor to the volumeudof traffic.udDue to data problems, the conclusions from this study must be drawn carefully. Theudfindings of this study therefore are more indicative than conclusive. Even thoughudthey may indicate and permit an anticipation of the future role of transport, theyudshould be interpreted more as trends and tendencies than an absolute predictions.