498 History of Inland Transport 



if their municipal tramway, in turn, should suffer materially 

 from the competition of the motor-omnibus. 



Private motor-cars may appear to have deprived the rail- 

 ways of a good deal of their passenger traffic, and they certainly 

 constitute a most material and much-appreciated increase in 

 the facilities now available for getting about the country. 

 It must, however, be remembered that a very large proportion 

 of the journeys taken in them would probably not be made 

 at all if the motor-car did not exist, and if such journeys had 

 to be made by train instead. The actual diversion of traffic 

 from the railway only occurs when journeys which would 

 otherwise be made by rail are made by motor, in preference. 

 Here the railway certainly does lose. 



Against the loss in the one direction in railway revenue, 

 owing to the greater use of motor-cars, there can at least be 

 set the constant growth in the taste for travel which the 

 railway companies (partly, again, to make up for the com- 

 petition in suburban traffic) have done their best to cultivate 

 by means of abnormally low excursion or week-end fares 

 based, as one leading railway officer put it to me, " not on any 

 idea of distance, but on the amount that the class of people 

 catered for might be assumed to be willing to pay." 



The travel habit has thus undergone a greater expansion 

 of late years than has ever before been known, so that a 

 falling-off of railway traffic in some directions ought, sooner 

 or later, to be compensated for by increases in others, if, 

 indeed, that result has not already been attained. 



The actual position in regard to passenger travel on the 

 railways of the United Kingdom during the years 1901-10 

 is shown by the following figures, taken from the Board of 

 Trade Railway Returns : 



PASSENGER RECEIPTS FROM 



YEAR. 



IQOI . 



1902 . 



1903 . 



1904 . 



1905 . 



1906 . 



1 Exclusive of those by season-ticket holders. 



