The Power of Quiet

On a Long Island Rail Road train heading to Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station, an obviously frustrated retired police officer named John Clifford picked a fight with fellow passengers over the loud use of a cell phone on a train on March 28, 2007.

According to the Associated Press, the fight became nasty enough that Mr. Clifford was arrested for various offenses that could have cost him a year in jail. After two days of trial in April 2008, however, he was found not guilty.

Mr. Clifford gave in to an impulse that many of us have had when we hear half of a cell phone conversation. Aboard a train, and in many other places too, it is tempting to strike out in some way at the tormentors who loudly burble into a cell phone about their latest woes and wiles.

We are not alone. Numerous public opinion surveys find that people are irritated by being around the cell phone calls of others. Recognizing this fact, Amtrak has created a "quiet car" on their Acela Express. The car is for those passengers who refrain from using their cell phone and those who want to avoid people who cannot.

The cell phone-free train car is not a concept limited to Amtrak. The French national railway provides something called the "Zen car," which is designed to encourage serene travel. No cell phone talking allowed. Recently, Graz, Austria announced that it would be implementing a similar tranquil carriage in their city system. And the subways of Germany go even further: signage asks riders to keep their MP3 players turned down so that the music leaking from earbuds will not irritate other riders.

Given the degree of civility shown on these and many other mass-transit systems, it seems high time for the Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit to adopt similar arrangements so that their riders can also enjoy cell phone-free train cars.

To date, though, these lines have refused to create quiet cars, citing a variety of technical, operational, and normative reasons as to why this cannot or should not be done. The various rationales against quiet cars can be reduced to four main arguments.

First is the assertion that travelers don't actually care about the issue. But, scientifically valid public opinion surveys done at the University of Michigan and elsewhere reveal that the majority of people find cell phone use by others in public places to be disagreeable.

Argument number two is operational: it is claimed that addressing the problem is beyond the scope of the railways. Conductors already have much too many tasks on their hands; they would not be able to keep up with the extra labor of monitoring behavior of train passengers. But conductors have to monitor a whole range of behaviors anyway from putting one's feet on the seat to engaging in lewd behavior.

Moreover, conductors would most likely receive help from passengers due to the logic of collective norm enforcement. If "no cell phone talking" signs were prominently posted, "shushers" join together to pressure the rule-violator to hang up. At one time, it was also claimed that it would not be possible to get people to refrain from smoking on trains due to the fact that the habit was so ingrained. However, with signage and citizen enforcement, and occasional intervention by conductors, the problem of smoky train cars has disappeared.

The third argument is based on relativism: cell phone talking is not much of a problem compared to other issues, so nothing needs to be done about it. Granted, compared to halting nuclear proliferation or ending child abuse, loud cell phone talking is not enormously consequential. Yet unlike these vast issues, the behavior of people on a train is under the jurisdiction of one organization so it is much easier to address the issue.

Passenger comfort is part of the mission of our commuter railroads. So why not make the small effort to remediate the problem? A little action to separate customers with diverging needs will make a big difference in the quality of the travel lives of commuters, a population that is increasing.

And there may even be an unintended benefit. Once a higher standard of behavior is established, problems such as littering and "feet on the seat" may be reduced. To strain a metaphor, quiet cars will, like the rising tide, lift all boats, or in this case all passengers' feet.

It would be a victory for those who would like to see the world move toward a more civil society where respect for the tranquility of others is deemed worthy of protection.

Mr. Katz, a professor of communication, is the director of the center for mobile communication studies at Rutgers University.