Time is money: a re-assessment of the passenger social savings from Victorian British railways

Tim Leunig

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper reassesses and extends Hawke’s passenger railway social savings for England and Wales. Better estimates of coach costs and evidence that third class passengers would otherwise have walked reduce Hawke’s social savings by two-thirds. We calculate railway speeds, and the amount and value of time saved by railways. Initially small, time savings was three times fare savings by 1912, when total railway passenger social savings exceeded 13% of GDP. The transition from railways saving money to saving time came when railway technology stopped simply fulfilling existing demand more cheaply (travel for the affluent) and became a new good (travel for the masses).

JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2005-07
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:22551

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