Royal Railways with Uniform Rates / A proposal for amalgamation of Railways with the General Post Office and adoption of uniform fares and rates for any distance

by Whately C. Arnold

The criticism may be made, however, that this number is nearly double the existing number of long distance passengers. Will such an increase be realised?

From a consideration of the following reasons it is submitted that not only will it be so, but that in point of fact a much larger increase may reasonably be anticipated.

1. No account as to passenger traffic has been taken of the normal increase in the number of passengers which has continued to increase regularly with the increase of population.

2. Under the proposed scheme the uniform fares are for as far as the train travels only, so that a journey say from London to Londonderry will involve at least three 1s. tickets, one to Holyhead, a second from Holyhead to Dublin, and a third from Dublin to Londonderry, whereas under the present system one through ticket would be purchased and would appear in the official returns as one journey only.

3. In practice nearly every single journey undertaken means a return journey home, so that an increase of 250,000,000 more passenger journeys does not involve a greater increase in the movement of the population than is represented by, say, 150,000,000 passengers.

4. If the number of passengers carried by the railways is compared with the population it may be noted that the total number of passengers carried last year in the Tube and Suburban Railways of London, with a population of between six and seven millions, was about 500,000,000 in addition to about the same number carried by omnibuses, and a further similar number by tramways. A similar proportion of railway passengers to the population of the United Kingdom of nearly 50 millions would be over 4,000,000,000 per annum, so that an actual total of 1,850,000,000 would undoubtedly be much less than may reasonably be anticipated.

5. It is not only the increased number of people who would travel to and from all parts of the country who now cannot or will not do so on account of the expense, but also the increase in the number of journeys undertaken by existing travellers. Parents living in remote parts of the country whose children work in large towns and who, on account of high fares, cannot visit each other, business men and commercial travellers who will multiply their long distance journeys for business purposes if they can do for 2s. what now costs 10 or 20 times as much, are a few among many classes who will swell the number. It will be remembered that by far the greater proportion of the population are those in receipt of an income of less than £3 per week to whom any fares of 10s. or over are prohibitive except in extreme cases.

Let me give one very homely illustration which has come under my notice. A domestic servant in London had a serious illness, necessitating an operation at one of the hospitals. Her parents lived in humble circumstances in a Cornish village. The mother came to London and had to pay £2 for a return ticket. Her daughter had to remain about two months in the hospital while the mother had to return home without being able to afford the luxury of another return journey to London. But during the whole of that time trains were going to and from the same place every day and night with plenty of room for the old lady, who could, of course, have been carried any number of times without any appreciable cost to the company.