Page:Professional papers on Indian Engineering (second series).djvu/41

 No. CCLXXXVIII.

INDIAN RAILWAY TRAFFIC,

No. 2.

By Col. J. G. Medley, R.E., Consulting Engineer to Government for Guaranteed Railways, Lahore.

In a paper on Indian Railway Traffic which I contributed to the Roorkee Professional Papers in the month of January 1876, I propounded vari- ous ideas on Indian Railway Traffic, some derived from my experience of American lines, others simply from general considerations such as naturally presented themselves to an outsider unconnected with Railway management.

Since that period, I have had nearly two years' experience of the practical working of the Indian Railway system, and it may be useful to record how far I have had to modify my ideas, or have succeeded in carrying them into practice, and what additional information on the subject I have derived from practical experience.

I. The first point to which I drew attention in the above paper was the importance of low passenger fares on Indian lines, and as further experience has fully confirmed this view, I cannot do better than sum- marize the reasons which have led me to this conclusion in the case of the 3rd class traffic, which forms more than ths of the whole. Those reasons are briefly as follows:

1. Because the value of money in India is at least six times as great as in England; or, what is the same thing, the people are six times as poor, so that the present rates, though low as com- pared with English standards, are in reality very high for India.

2. Because the numbers of people that still travel by road on foot are a strong proof of this.