Where ‘Shhh!’ is all you hear
Commuter trains increase quiet cars
NEW YORK — Silence is golden. Or is it, for busy business travelers and commuters?
Riders on New York’s Long Island Railroad and Metro-north will have an easier time finding a quiet car now that the busiest commuter rail lines in North America increased the number of quiet spaces this month.
Amtrak started the trend of having cars that are free from cellphone chatter more than a decade ago. Now, corporate trekkers and other passengers see other rail lines across the U.S., such as Chicago’s Metra and Southern California’s Metrolink, setting aside space where even gossip with a seatmate has to be hushed.
But at a time a weakened economy is increasing pressure on employees to produce, not all riders want to stay mum when they could be using their commute to get a head start on the day’s tasks.
“I’m on the phone half the time,” says Doug Culp of Galveston, Texas, who runs a distribution operation and comes across quiet cars when traveling on the East Coast. “I respect those who want to sleep. But I’m not one of them.”
Eric Klinenberg, professor of sociology at New York University, says the tug between working around the clock and carving out some peace and quiet is “one of the most challenging struggles of our time.”
“Unfortunately,” he says, “the need to always work usually trumps our personal need for solitude.” And that pressure makes “solitude more neces- sary than ever,” he says.
Rail lines introduced quiet cars at the request of passengers who are spending more time commuting, dealing with more stress at work, and yearning for quiet amid the rabble of ringing cellphones and chirping video games, says Martin Schroeder, chief engineer for the American Public Transportation Association.
The rules of quiet car decorum are usually announced over a train’s public address system, and sometimes reinforced with cards or fliers, rail officials say.
While self-policing is encouraged, conductors may step in when the rules are violated to enforce them.
John Whyte, chief medical expert for the Discovery Channel, says that in February, he got shushed for shuffling and ripping papers too loudly.
“The conductor actually came over to me and said, ‘You’re shuffling your papers too much, and stop tearing,’ ” says Whyte, who was traveling in an Amtrak quiet car on the way to New York from his home in Washington.
He wasn’t initially a fan of the mobile quiet zones.
“I did like to do work, and I was concerned, ‘What if I need to be on the phone?’ ” he says. “It was a little bit of not knowing quite what the quiet car was.” Now, he heads right for it. “What I’ve learned is I really enjoy the quiet,” Whyte says. “I bring a lot of reading materials knowing that for roughly 2½ hours, I’m going to be able to catch up.”
No chatting, please
It’s not surprising that some passengers react fiercely when someone disrupts the tranquility of a no-noise zone, says Mitchell Moss, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at NYU’S Wagner School.
“We’re going to see a lot more conflict between the talkers and the readers on commuter rail, because noise is very invasive,” Moss says.
A commuter train used to be an “oasis” from the stress of office and home. Now, he says, “The telephone conversation on the commuter rail is . . . equal to the screaming baby on an airplane.”
Amtrak launched its quiet car program as a test in January 2000. It now has quiet cars on several lines, including the Acela Express from Washington to Boston, the Hiawatha between Chicago and Milwaukee, and on service from San Jose to Auburn, Calif.
Metra, the commuter rail system serving the Chicago area, introduced quiet cars in January 2011. Metra has since put quiet cars on all 11 of its lines.
“There’s something particularly annoying about listening to one half of a cellphone conversation, and we hear that back from our riders repeatedly,” says Michael Gillis, a Metra spokesman.
Quiet zones aren’t popular with everyone, he says. Some argue they should be able to talk on public transportation.
“We said to the people, ‘We only put it on two cars at most of our train sets,’ ” Gillis says, “and that way, we give people a choice.”
Doug Culp, who bypasses the quiet car, says he thinks most riders are like him. They prefer to be able to chat and work.
“The reason we don’t take the (airplane) shuttle . . . is because we want to be able to do some work and have three or four people around us to communicate with — as opposed to just sitting there and reading our books.”
But rail officials emphasize that trains with quiet cars offer the best of both worlds.