Alan K. Meier

Intermediate Transport in South East Asian Cities

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Transport in Penang - Transport of Goods

In the transport of the vast majority of people, Penang is very conventional. It comes as a surprise then to see the great diversity of intermediate freight and goods transport modes. I believe this is explained in part by the irrelevance of status in freight transport; cost alone is the determining factor. Without the encumbrance of status, all sorts of practical freight transport vehicles have evolved.

There are still over a hundred handcarts operating in Penang. Most of them carry freight related to port activities, but they are often seen throughout the city. Since Penang is a relatively small city, the handcarts are still very convenient for carrying several hundred kilos of bulky goods between business premises. Typical cargoes are: lumber, empty containers, grains and furniture. The carts run on large, wooden, steel-rimmed wheels. The handcart business is both owned and operated by Indians. Little is known about the system except that the pullers hire the carts from the owners. It appears that this business too, is just marginally profitable. There are usually fifteen to twenty carts parked in vacant lots in the Indian district of Penang that never seem to be moved. There are also a number of damaged carts lying in the streets which might account for the 10% decrease in registrations last year. Bullock carts were used inside the city as recently as the 1960's and are still frequently seen outside in the suburbs.

Bicycles are often used to carry freight. Virtually every bicycle has a rack built over the back wheel. Sometimes just a wicker basket is lashed on, but in the case of more specific uses a specially adapted rack is built. Bread delivery, for example, is usually done with a large box over the rear wheel. Milk vendors also carry their brass milk containers on the back of their bicycles. Bicycle vending and hawking appears to be another exclusively Indian occupation.

Similar trades are performed on motorcycles. Racks are built over the back seat to carry the goods. Usually the racks are equipped with retractable legs for support when parked. Many similar items are peddled from motorcycles and bicycles but the chief difference is the regions they serve, the motorcycles working the more distant suburbs. Some food vendors, who operate out of kitchens in Georgetown but sell in the suburbs, use motorcycles. One motorcycle had a special rack designed to carry several containers of bottled gas. The postal service uses bicycles for its inner city delivery and motorcycles for the suburbs.

Trishas are also an important freight vehicle. Trisha riders will often supplement passenger fares by carrying goods. They might, for example, arrange to make a regular delivery of some goods to a number of stores each morning. A common practice is to carry meat carcasses from the butchers in the market to their institutional customers like the hospitals and schools. If someone wants to move some goods, he merely hails a trisha, negotiates a fare, and loads up.

During World War II, a second form of trisha appeared. It was basically a bicycle with a sidecar attached to its left side. This form was used exclusively in Singapore - a few remain for tourist consumption - and partly in Kuala Lumpur. In Penang, however, the few that ever existed were converted to freight use. This is a very simple operation; the sidecar was designed so that the seat could quickly unscrew, leaving a flat, one and a half metre long, freight bed. The arrangement is ideal for odd shaped objects like glass or metal stock. Every glazier's shop, for example, has one of these tricycles.

The bicycle with a sidecar (for people) is interesting because it demonstrates another evolutionary route of the pedicab. Clearly, the sidecar pedicab evolved from the bicycle while the trisha evolved from the freight tricycle. Curiously, both Singapore and Penang had bicycles and freight tricycles, but one city, Singapore, fashioned its human transport out of the bicycle while the other, Penang, fashioned its after the freight tricycle. There are no known cultural or historical differences important enough to justify such differentiation. (The fate of the Singapore pedicab is interesting. Singapore had no hinterland to which to export its phased-out pedicabs, so they were shipped across the Straits of Malacca to the Indonesian city of Medan - the only Indonesian city to have this form of pedicab.)

The most fascinating vehicle in Penang's transport mix is the freight tricycle. Although it has parallels in other Asian cities, no other place has exploited it so well as Penang. It closely resembles the trisha except that a large metal box is placed between the two front wheels instead of a seat. The rear half of the frame is identical to the trisha, though a lower gear ratio is sometimes used. Unlike the trisha, the tricycle's front kickstand is retractable, via a lever, from the rider's seat. The steering bar is adjustable on the new models so that it will not knock the rider's knees. There are two models, medium duty and heavy duty. They differ only in the sturdiness of the front wheels. Recently, however, a new model has been introduced which uses a much smaller pair of front wheels, about the size of the smallest Honda motorcycle. They command a premium over the traditional tricycles because they can carry heavier loads and the tyres last several times as long. Since a tricycle lasts over twenty years, the accumulated savings on new tyres make the premium worthwhile. In addition, the smaller wheels allow the installation of a deeper box for greater capacity and a lower centre of gravity. Penang's roads are so well sealed that it is no more difficult pedalling with the small wheels. New tricycles with the small wheels cost about $175.

Virtually every shop doing any sort of delivery or freight movement has a tricycle. Officially, there are just over 2,000 tricycles in Penang. In practice, there are probably closer to 3,000. The tricycles are ideally suited for Penang's narrow streets. They can efficiently carry loads of 5 to 200 kg. of distances up to four kilometerr. A number of tricycles travel much greater distances, leaving the city entirely to gather a crop of coconuts, sugar cane, or bananas, for use in the food stalls.

Other tricycles are used strictly for hawking purposes. This includes selling meat, bread, and ice cream. Naturally, special adaptations are made for each function. The meat tricycles, for example, are mobile butcher shops, capable of supplying most of a housewife's needs.

The tricycle construction industry is very closely tied to the consumption of food. Malaysia and Singapore are unique in that thousands of people obtain their meals from food stalls. Dozens of different foods are prepared in these stalls, from soup to satay, fried noodles to prepared fruits. Some of the stalls are fixed, but most of them are on wheels. Originally, they all had four small solid rubber wheels. The vendor would push his stall to his assigned position and then wheel it home late in the evening. If he lived far away from his vending area, he might arrange a parking place nearer the area.

Over the years the four wheel stalls were slowly replaced by specially adapted tricycles. The adaptations include stoves, ovens, refrigerating facilities, sugar cane presses, shelves, drawers, and roofs. Many are wired for electricity, either from the mains or from rented batteries (which cost about $45 a night). As a tricycle, the stalls have vastly increased mobility which allows them to visit several neighbourhoods each night. It also allows the stall to follow the crowds to special events as well as simplifying loading and supplying.

Each tricycle stall is custom made to the buyer's specifications. Most of the stalls are fairly well standardized; that is, fried noodle stands are virtually identical, so the builder can keep patterns of the parts. While the food at the stalls is often sold on a commission basis, the stall itself is individually owned. They cost around $340.

Many tricycles are used to service the food stalls. Every evening, for example, a tricycle will deliver a battery to each stall to power its lights. There are several large kitchens that use a fleet of tricycles to deliver prepared food to the stalls. Other tricycles deliver charcoal, ice, meat, sugar cane, bean sprouts, and noodles. At the end of the day another tricycle takes away the stalls' garbage. Altogether, about 500 tricycles are used to service the food stalls.

So far, only a few of the shops are building tricycles or stalls with the new, smaller wheels. The design will no doubt spread because all the shopkeepers I spoke to had already recognized the superiority of the smaller-wheeled vehicles. Since the life expectancy of the tricycles is so long, conversion will be a slow process in any case.

The construction of stalls on tricycle chassis' confuses estimates of new tricycle manufacture. Government statistics indicate a ten percent decline in the number of tricycles. Perhaps ten shops are working full time building and repairing tricycles and stalls, and many are built each year, perhaps as many as two thousand. Most of them are converted into stalls but maybe an eighth end up as freight tricycles. Of the 200 chassis manufactured annually in one shop I visited, 25 were destined to be freight tricycles. One thing is clear, however, the tricycle business is alive and prospering. Despite official statistics to the contrary, the number of freight tricycles must be rising, perhaps by as much as five percent annually.

Surprisingly, there have been no attempts at motorisation of the tricycle, though Penang has more than adequate machine shop facilities for such a conversion. The only indication that motorisation has been considered came from a trisha owner. He said he had heard rumours that the government was considering a motorisation programme to replace trishas. Since tricycle and trisha construction are more of a tradition than a technology, it must be understood that the introduction of an engine is more like the introduction of a cultural change, rather than merely a technological innovation.

It is not clear why the freight tricycle is so popular in Penang. The city is not unique with respect to geography or industry. Perhaps the only differentiable feature from other Malaysian cities is its Chinese majority. It is my impression that the Chinese seem to have a preference for these small vehicles. In most Southeast Asian cities the preference is diluted or obscured due to their minority status. Only in Penang and Singapore do the Chinese constitute a majority. In the past, Singapore also had thousands of tricycles but now they are fast disappearing, probably as a result of the nation's affluence. Conceivably, their popularity may be due to their technological superiority. I believe the Penang freight tricycle is the best design in Asia.