Sleepless on trains: The growing noise problem

Chennai: Despite railways trying to strictly enforce ‘quiet hours’ policy from 10 pm to 6 am on trains, passengers continue to violate the rules. The move to ensure undisturbed sleep for passengers at nights is definitely a step in the right direction.

While passengers can report noise violations directly to train staff or call 139 helpline, TTEs and RPF can take action against those who play loud music, videos/reels on speaker and shout and talk loudly. Though use of earphones/headphones for audio/video is mandatory, not all passengers do it and continue to disturb fellow passengers.

Densely populated coaches make it difficult to rein in this menace. Besides, a general lack of awareness and different cultural habits regarding noise contribute to high noise levels. Also, trains having diverse passenger groups with different boarding schedules make silence difficult to maintain at night.

Several countries, especially in Europe and Asia, have strict rules and etiquette for maintaining silence on trains at night to ensure passenger comfort. Night trains in Japan have strict rules against loud noise. In some countries, train staff are quite proactive and make non-confrontational interventions to maintain silence. Others rely on passengers observing the rules themselves.

In our country, overburdened infrastructure and erratic schedules also drive train passengers to manage their own noisy space to cope with long journeys. Enforcing these rules on thousands of moving trains is both difficult and challenging, often resulting in passengers ignoring them. Only significant behavioral changes and stricter onboard supervision can ensure a good night’s sleep on trains. And a recent sleepless rail journey stirred this columnist’s train of thoughts.