DISCUSSION.

Herbert Ashton's thoughtful paper on the time element in transportation offers a fundamental approach to the study of the time interval and cost incident to the movement of goods and persons. Studies of cost and quality of service generally have been related to the problems of regulation rather than to the evaluation and measurement of the economic impact of a more efficient performance of transportation service. In his discussion he poses three principal questions, if time, that is, speed, has economic significance in transportation service apart from other factors such as availability, cost, and dependability which can be separated out and measured independently, the economic significance of the time factor, and the economic importance of time. After assuming that the economic significance of time in transportation is implicit, he proceeds to recite the economic advantages of increased speed in terms of increased value of perishable and style goods, the extension of markets, faster turnover of stocks, reduced capital in goods in transit, and more stability of the distributive process.