Higher Railway Rates Unavoidable.
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We have given several warnings in our pages, during the past twelve months, ts to the threatened and, in fact, unavoidable necessity for an increase of railway rates throughout the United Kingdom. The Irish goods rates were put up by 10 per cent. on the 1st December last ; the only point in abeyance as regards the rest of the Kingdom is the fixing of the exact date when rates will generally be increased. We do not anticipate so huge an increase as the 50 per cent. which, has been applied to passengers : the oommerce. and industry of the country must be wrecked, were any Ach drastic change ever to be mooted.
One has observed, so far, only minor indications of a stiffening-up character, but the outstanding fact. of increased labour Charges has become a permanent —and the determining—factor. Successive increases of wages to railway men, since the outbreak of war, are known to be in the vicinity of 218,000,000 per. annum on all the railway undertakings of the United Kingdom : this sum approximates the amount which was distributed annually in dividends to the shareholders under pre-war conditions. How can the shareholders again see even the. low average annual return which they were then enjoying, in the absence of material increases of railway rates ? We doubt if the 10-per-cent. increaae, which is teing experimentally applied in Ireland, will prove to be enough to meet the situation in England, Scotland, &ha Wales. Users and intending users of commercial motors must not ignore the certainty of material and universal after-peace increases of rates 'for railway conveyance of merchandise. There have been, we know, certain increases in the costs of working commercial motors, principally due to the high charges for fuel and repairs, but these difficulties are relatively of a temporary character, and they will generally be ameliorated after the peace. Railway companies have no real alternative but to recoup "themselves out of their goods traffic, and large numbers of manufacturers and traders will have no alternative, by way of self-protection, but to make fresh purchases of motor wagons.
Walk Facing the Traffic, If Next To It Or Amongst It
Considerable controversy has again arisen, in part by reason of the activities of the .Loadon " Safety First" Osaincil, in respectiof the wisdom or unwisdom of altering the popular' rules of the road. We refer to the practice of pedestrians to" Keep to the right," and the practice of wheeled traffic, on the carriageway to " Keep to the left." . • The recommendation of the London "Safety First" Council is that all foot passengers on the pavement should also "Keep to the left," thus facing, the stream of traffic into which they may occasionally. have to step, instead of suffering the consequences of: accidents which are directly attributable—as is undeniably proved by statistics—to the involuntary and recurring act of pedestrians in suddenly stepping off the pavement into a -line of traffic which is overtaking them. The present rule engenders this. 'Experienced and thoughtful students of highway practices have opposed the above scheme for altering the accepted rule of the pavement. We understand that they base their objections upon two principal grounds. The first of these is, that the pedestrian will be just as liable to walk into the traffic without looking as he is now. We consider this objection to be wholly unsupportable by any reference to actual happenings. It must be admitted by all that the pedestrian who is walking nearest to the kerb, and acing the direction in which the adjacent traffic is • passing him, will instinctively look at the approaching units of that traffic before stepping into the carriageway. This order of events is common ground between advocates and critic, but the critics assert that the case of the Pedestrian who is walking in the direction of the adjacent traffic, but according to the proposed new rule nearest to the buildings or inside extremity of the pavement, will be as much endan . gered as before. This proposed 'objection cannot be
seriously advanced, we think. Any such pedestrian, in striking across at an angle from the inside extremity of the pavement to -the kerb, must get the . opportunity to look obliquely at the oncoming traffic, into which traffic, had he been walking (as by the present .rule of " Keep to the right ") on the extremity of the pavement coincident with the kerb, he must have stepped -without any such opportunity automatically and sub-consciously to eonsider his own
safety. • The second objection. of the critics is deserving of more consideration., because it apparently has more in it. They object to a confu skin of rules for the pedestrian, and they claim that his accustomed
Keep to the left" on the pavement must become "Keep to the right" on the carriageway. ,There is a certain amount of plausibility in this contention, but the argument is none the 'less one-of which we feel competent to dispose. Let the new, rule be at all timos "Walk facing the traffic, if next to it or amongst it:" This single rule will get rid of the apparent • co,nfusion, which we are more particularly told will apply when a pavement is no longer continued on any highway, as when urban conditions merge into rural. Such a condition is admirably met by the unifying of the two.directions. "Keep to the left" on the pavement and " Keep to the right" on the road are both expressed in the one rule "Walk facing the, traffic, if next to it or amongst it." It co-ordinates them, and does so in language of which the import is neither ambiguous nor open to two interpretations different times. The direction might be sho`rtened to read : " Face the traffic, when next to or amongst The man-in-the-street detests rules. But he does not particularly relish losing his lifeon a civilian quest. . He May not be able to memorise or regard a rule of more than three or four words.We are. in • formed, this is-the case. Very good. Let the guiding rule be : "Walk facing the traffic."