New Zealanders may envy Londoners and Parisians their extensive commuter train networks, but the glories of mass transport come with a culture of seething resentment.
Had Jean-Paul Sartre lived to experience today’s Metro, he would have elaborated on “Hell is other people”, adding “… and their braying cellphone conversations, their blaring music, squealing headphones, unwashed bodies, reeking takeaways, stabby elbows and insolently sprawling, feet-on-the-seat lack of manners”.
French debate on commuter etiquette crescendoed recently when officials fined a man NZ$380 a for using his cellphone on speaker on a platform.
While some thought this excessive, given platforms are noisy anyway, others applauded.
In Britain, where moaning about the Tube is a way of life, pollster YouGov has found 86% disapproval for speaker-phone use in a shared environment and 88% resentment of people speaking loudly.
British and European trains and buses typically ban personal music on speakers, seat-hogging with baggage, barging, drunkenness and other unruly behaviour, but enforcement varies. Some services offer silent carriages for a higher fare, but reservations are often flouted, as are “no phone use” rules.
Passenger exasperation with declining etiquette seems a feature of most non-Asian urban transport hubs, tourists often marvelling at the quiet consideration of Japanese, Korean and other Eastern commuters.
Still, it could be the decline in manners simply mirrors the decline in efficiency, affordability and cleanliness of transport services.
Many of German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn’s local and long-distance services are now routinely late, costing it NZ$375 million in compensation last year to inconvenienced passengers. It’s struggling to upgrade its outgrown infrastructure, the country’s audit office warning it risks becoming “a bottomless pit for taxpayers’ money”.
In Italy, where a certain former leader once promised to make the trains run on time, even its handsomely upgraded new services have caused annoyance, being overwhelmed with new demand from locals and tourists, leading to increased delays.
French rail’s RATP has tried running an etiquette partnership campaign, pitching it as a project “between” itself and customers. It advertised widely to highlight “unusual behaviours”that might discommode fellow passengers.
The chief targets were loud music and dancing, with the message that such joie de vivre did not necessarily delight a whole carriage – au contraire. Among other faux pas were a woman carrying a giant, spikey-leaved pot plant and a pair playing chess on a vacant seat between them – benign activities, but less charmant if the plant got someone in the eye, and not what train seats were intended for.
Further draining commuter respect may be operators’ lack of honesty about service failures. Britons still deride the official explanation for a massive rail outage in the 1990s: “a different kind of snow” preventing trains from using tracks.
In Italy, a tradie was blamed for the cancellation of 100 train trips last year after accidentally driving a nail through a power cable. It proved only a minor factor in the shemozzle, and the attempt to scapegoat a single worker was widely resented.
Disgruntlement can brew even when operators genuinely try to look after passengers. Many Londoners feel infantilised by automated fine-weather injunctions to “remember to bring water” on their journeys.
After public alarm at assaults and stalking, most Brits welcomed a commitment to proactive policing of reported harassment at each station. But the accompanying slogan, “See it. Say it. Sorted!” risked inciting extra aggro.
Still, it’s hard to beat Ireland’s Dublin Area Rapid Transit for a perverse public-good initiative. Promoting the local environment, it bedecked trains with endearing images of seals, otters, frogs, goats and other fauna – but placed them over train windows, preventing many passengers from seeing out the window.
