ENGLISH RAILWAY TICKETS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10037, 6 May 1910, Page 3

ENGLISH RAILWAY TICKETS.

The introduction of a Biil by Mr | A. C. Morton, M.P., in tne House o£ Commons, providing that every passenger ticket issued for a jjurney by train shall be available for use at any time, opens up a wide field, writes a contributor in the Daily Mail. The present system of railway tickets, and particularly of season tickets, is none too satisfactory. The railway companies are, without question, cheated wholesale, and passengers are put to a maximum of inconvenience. Why should I, for instance, if I stay a few days longer at a place be fined by the railway company a greater or smaller sum on my return journey? Why should I, if 1 wish to return, from a week-end at the seaside on Monday morning, have to pay three or four shillings more than it I returned on Sunday night or Tuesday morning? Take the season ticket. A leading railway official recently stated that fraud is carried on to an extent that the average man would never imagine by people travelling as season ticket holders without really having tickets. The custom in London is for the season ticket holders to pass the barriers without examination, save on special days, when they are called up without warning to show their passes. Walk boldly past the inspector at any London barrier and nod your head and say "Season," and the chance is ninety-nine to one that you wiil gQ without further challenge. "Six of Our collectors standing at the barriers paid in no less a sum than £1,200 in one year as the proceeds of shortage n tickets and unpaid fares collected by them from paesengers, cf whom only a few had voluntarily tendered the money." There is a very easy remedy for this. Let the railway companies do as some American lines known to me do. in place of giving a ticket for three months, six months, or a year, let them issue Uook of tickets for hundred journeys at corresponding reduction and make every ticket holder give up a slip each time. Cheating by this means would be checked at once. The traveller would only pay for the journey he takes, and both public and companies would benefit.