SPEED ON TUBE RAILWAYS

The schedule speed on tube railways is, approximately, sixteen miles per hour. If the route be eight miles long, and a two-minute rush service be provided, a minimum of thirty trains per hour, with a collective seating capacity of 9,000, will be essential. With a twenty-mile speed, only twentyfour trains would be required. If the existing number were retained, a 1½-minute service could be run, and the seating capacity increased to 11,250. Twenty miles per hour does not seem an alarming railway speed. With two stops per mile, the common London standard, it is neither technically nor financially practicable. The strain on generating stations, rolling stock, and permanent way would be extremely severe. For distances up to nearly two miles, underground traction is but little superior in speed and distinctly inferior in comfort to surface tramway or omnibus. The average passenger receipts indicate an approximate three-mile journey. Local railways meet, therefore, with limited success in the fight for the enormous short-distance local traffic. Stopping twice per mile, as the basis of working, is therefore wrong both in principle and practice. Equally unjustifiable, technically and financially, is the surface traction policy of attempting to attract long-distance passengers by cheap fares. Co-ordination of the means of passenger transit must prevent as far as possible such wasteful competition. This can best be secured by a more scientific system of fares. TRAMWAYS AND OMNIBUSES. – A low initial fare for short distances, the rate rapidly increasing as the distance increases. LOCAL AND TUBE RAILWAYS. – A high initial fare for short distances, the rate rapidly decreasing as the distance increases. Under such a system, long-distance travellers would use railways, short-distance passengers surface traction. Many of the less important stations could be closed. At others only a limited number of trains would stop. A higher rate of speed could be maintained without strain on existing equipment, and the gain of increased accommodation referred to would be realised. Any such proposal pre-supposes the unification of the whole London transportation system, at all events during the war.