I have a question

Yesterday, my roommate and I were talking (or was it just me babbling? can’t recall), and it got me thinking about acceptable and unacceptable rider-generated noise on public transportation.

For example, on CTA buses and trains, we’ve all seen signs warning us to keep the volume of our cell-phone conversations down. And people do seem to get irritated when someone is speaking on their phone even just loudly enough for the people in his/her general vicinity to hear.

What I want to know is this: Why does this rule not also apply to conversations between two riders? How is it any less annoying to hear both sides of a given conversation? In theory, the amount of noise pollution is actually reduced when you’re able to hear only one person involved, rather than two.

And then what about people playing their iPods loudly enough for other people to hear? This behavior, too, has CTA signs warning people against it, and people are irritated by it—but the volume is almost always lower than that of a conversation between two riders, especially on a loud bus or train.

Personally, cranky person that I am, it all irritates me. I’m generally trying to read, and all the above noise makes that impossible for me. If I ruled the universe, people would be socially pressured to treat a bus or train a lot like a library. Hmm… Let me pause for a moment and envision how fantastic that would be…

I’d throw this question out there for general discussion if I thought anyone (including my co-blogger) were reading it…

~ by urbanmisanthrope on April 20, 2008.