The Dominion TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1927. MAKING THE RAILWAYS ATTRACTIVE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 8, 4 October 1927, Page 8

The Dominion TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1927. MAKING THE RAILWAYS ATTRACTIVE

♦ One of the problems the new Railway Transport. Board will presumably take into consideration is how to make train travel so attractive that the public will really enjoy it. Railway travel may be convenient, it may be expeditious, but it can also be ' extremely uncomfortable. The first two are questions of organisation, but the third involves much progressive thinking along new. lines. Speaking in the House on Saturday, the Prime Minister said that in the railway year under review 1,500,000 fewer' passengers were carried than during the previous year. This, he explained, was due to the competition of the motor-buses and the increasing use of private cars. If this were really the whole reason, then it might appear as if these million and a half passengers were lost to the railways for good. But one has a feeling that the actual, discomforts of railway travel may be an important, factor in the situation. The traveller now has, what he did not have before, a. choice of transport. Other things being equal—speed and convenience—he is likely to balance between the two the factor of comfort. Railway customs die hard. Those in authority, in the past at any rate, seem to have found it exceedingly difficult to break from tradition. There is, for example, the traditional railway waitingroom, almost without exception a cold, dull, cheerless, uninviting place. When one considers the circumstances in which it is used, often on occasions of long waits for trains running late, it should have attributes the very opposite. “Brighter waiting-rooms’’ might be a useful and inspiring slogan for our railway reformers. Another source of discomfort is what appears to the tired traveller the unnecessary trouble he frequently experiences in disposing' of his luggage. ' The luggage problem is no doubt a very difficult one, for it is in the nature of the case spasmodic in its occurrence. A staff equal to the task of coping witlj an express train rush at a- terminal station would at other times be hanging about doing nothing. Nevertheless, the problem calls for some hard thinking. It is extremely annoying to be one of a number waiting in the left-luggage room of a terminal station a few. minutes before train time, watching the movements of two porters endeavouring to cope with the rush. On such occasions tempers are likely to be lost on both sides of the counter.

If the Transport Board is able to devise some system of conveying passengers and luggage from their stations to their homes, or from their-homes to their stations, as, one notes with satisfaction, it is proposed to be attempted, one of the principal discomforts of railway travel will be largely ameliorated. A better systeffi of providing refreshment for long-distance travellers is also in view. That also is- a convenience • and comfort the public would gladly welcome.

From all parts of the House, the Minister of Railways has been congratulated on the policy outlined in his statement. Fortified by this general approval of his aim to make the railways more attractive to the public, the Minister need have no hesitation about forging ahead with . his programme.