The morning call., 1890-05-11
A NEW SYSTEM.
The Letter Postage Principle APP
piled to Railroad Travel.

APald T recent meeting of the American
%EAS Academy of Political and Social
G%A7 Science, held in Philadelphia. Pro-
lessor E. j. James Of the University of
Pennsy lvania, read the following novel and
interesting paper:
He said For the last nine months a
most interesting experiment in railroad
management has been going on in hungary
As result, new system of passenger
tariffs was worked out and put into oper-
alton on the first of August, 1889. The
method adopted was that commonly
known as the Zone-tarlff system in
which the rates are fixed, not according
to the number of miles travelled by
the passenger, but according to the number
OF zones trayerSed or entered npon during
the journey. Starting from given center,
the railroads are divided into fourteen zones
or stretches. The first zone includes all
stations within % kilUmeters of the center /;
the second, all more than % and less than
80, etc. each zone after the first up to the
twelfth, being 10 kilOmeters long, or, as we
should perhaps better say, wide. Tickets
are sold by zones, being good for all stations
within the zone.
how radical a change this system i'm
| plies Tor large part of the traffic can be
seen In the extreme case. l. e., in those in
| which the reduction has been the greatest
| The fare Tor all stations in the fourteenth
| zone, which includes all stations more than
| Do kilometers from the capital, are 8, $50
and 4 gulden respectively tor the three
| classes, corresponding to 81 IS, 81 Us and
| 81 Al. II we had tile same rate in this
| country, it would be possible to buy rail-
| road ticket to Chicago from New York for
| 81 %. The fare from New York to Phila-
! delphia would be 90 cents.
The simplifcation of the tariff is yery
| great. Under the old system the number
| of distinct tickets which had to be kept in
every large office was nearly 700. 1t is now
| only 81.
The railroad tickets are now placed on
sale like postage stamps at the postoffices.
hotels, cgar-shops and other convenient
places. The public is greatly pleased at the
| discarding of the complicated machinery of
| ticket selling as practiced under the old
| system.
The most interesting thing, however, In
this experiment is the way in which the
| passenger traffic has increased under the
| stimulus of the new rates. The number of
| passengers during the last five months of
| 1887 was 1859, 400, during the same period
! OF 1885 was 2.3S1 200, while for the same
period of 1SS9-the first period under the
new system-it was 5,5S4, 600, an increase of
| over 1873 per cent. The receipts from the
traffic under the new system were over Is
per cent greater than under the old. In
| other words, passenger traffic will respond
to lower rates, thing which some railroad
managers have denied.
1t would be well for our own railroad
managers who complain that passenger
traffic is not profitable to look into the mat
ter. The American people, reputed to be
the most restless in the world, do not have
nearly as many passengers per head of the
population as England, and it is far ex-
ceeded In the number of passengers to mile
of railway by half dozen countries of
Europe.