London’s underground has its own soundtrack.
There is the eternal reminder to “Mind the Gap.” The alerts about “severe delays” and subsequent groans from commuters. And the call to vigilance: “See it, Say it, Sorted.”
Recently, though, British transit riders have noticed a sonic creep on their commutes. Could that be Charli XCX playing inside the carriage? Did that ping come from someone playing Mario Kart by the door? And was that really a breakup on speaker?
On Tuesday, London’s public transit operator took action, with a social media campaign and posters on one line gently reminding riders who listen to music, play games or make calls to use their headphones.
Many in Britain have long disdained the practice of playing music through a phone’s speakers in public as “sodcasting.” In a June survey, about 70 percent of riders said they found headphone-less phone use “disruptive.”
“The only thing worse than being a slave to your own device and its incessant chatter is being forced to hear other people’s,” the writer Hannah Ewens wrote in The Guardian.
A centrist party, the Liberal Democrats, called this spring for a ban on loud music on public transport and strict enforcement of fines for “headphone dodgers.”
But London’s transit authority chose, with its campaign, to rely on an appeal to manners rather than the threat of penalty.
“It’s about getting them to think and be a little bit more considerate,” Emma Strain, the customer director of Transport for London, the transit authority, said in an interview.
Many riders may not notice that their noise is disruptive, Ms. Strain said, adding, “They’re often not thinking about others.” Riders usually comply if asked to turn their music off, she noted.
If they don’t, they can be fined up to £1,000, or about $1,350, for playing music out loud, and be asked to leave the train. “Enforcement is a last resort,” the agency said in a statement by email.
London’s transit authorities are hardly alone in trying to respond to yowls of frustration from commuters.
The public transit operators in Massachusetts and Toronto have barred passengers from playing music without headphones, while Montreal’s strongly discourages doing so.
In the French city of Nantes, a man was fined 200 euros, about $230, earlier this year for making a call on a loudspeaker at a train station. Ireland’s rail operator reminded people earlier this month that they could be fined 100 euros, or about $115, for listening to music without headphones.
“This is definitely a growing issue,” Barry Kenny, the head of corporate communications for Irish Rail, wrote in an email. He noted that although it is possible to fine customers, “our preference is to always resolve matters without having to do so.”
For some transit riders, disruption may be the goal, said Elijah Anderson, a professor of sociology and Black studies at Yale University who has written extensively about race, civility and negotiation in shared public spaces.
Playing music loudly from boomboxes in public is “an assault on civil society,” he said, but also a way for people to assert their right to a public space, and a form of political resistance.
Headphone-less phone use, he said, may be the modern iteration.
“You’re claiming space,” Dr. Anderson said, adding, “Some people find it obnoxious, but the person doing it is implying, This is my music, and this is my right to play it like this.”
William Hanson, an etiquette coach in London, said that the pointed, but mostly passive campaign felt distinctly British. “We’re plotting that person’s slow and eventual painful death,” he said, “but we wouldn’t dare say anything.”
He is skeptical about how effective the posters may be. To even notice them, he said, people would have to look up from their phones.
Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.
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