The Railways and the Road Carriers.

With a view to consolidating their position, and ensuring effective co-ordination between rail and road, the Home railways are steadily proceeding with the acquisition of financial interests in the leading road carrying concerns. Existing road carriers of repute are being induced to combine with the railways on a fifty-fifty basis, this being the most satisfactory mode of tackling the problem in view of the impossibility of taking off any established road services directly in competition with the railways. The position, of course, is that if by agreement with the co-ordinated road carriers one of these competitive road services was taken off with the idea of forcing the passengers back to the rail route, some other road carrying company or private individual would at once commence a road service to cover the route vacated, and the consequences would be worse than ever from the railway viewpoint. Wherever there is a public demand for road services, this demand has to be met, and the railways might just as well profit from this demand.

It is clear that railways all over the world have definitely lost for good much of their short-distance business, both passenger and freight, the only exception to this being in cases where intensified electric services are run. This is serious, but the situation is one that railways, with their characteristic adaptability and enterprise should overcome successfully. Short-hauls are not particularly profitable at the best of times, and when the handling of short-haul business entails expensive new works in congested city areas all the gilt is taken off the ginger-bread. One feature of Home railway enterprise that is to be commended is the effort that is being exerted to make every railway depot the traffic centre of the city, all connecting bus services being as far as possible run to and from this point and the railway waiting-room, thus serving a dual need. Thus, the idea that railways are not merely “railways.” but rather “transport-ways” in the fullest sense of the term, is being developed, and the public mind prepared for the new era when the “Iron Way” will really be a comprehensive carrying undertaking, covering movement of all kinds by rail, road, sea and air.