The Telegraph reports that the Noise Abatement Society is launching a campaign to “reduce the number and volume of messages that increasingly bombard people” in public places. One of the cases the article focuses on is that of rail journeys. To my mind, this is the single most irritating and frustrating aspect of travelling on mainline train services, so I’m very pleased that the issue has been raised.
I regularly travel from Leeds to Peterborough on National Express East Coast services. NXEC are by far the worst company that I’ve encountered for nuisance announcements. It’s been a couple of months since I travelled this route, and I’ve never made a list of the offending announcements, but as I remember it goes something like this. Before the train has even departed, a lengthy sermon about the trip and the need to have a ticket valid for this precise journey — which often sounds like it’s designed to make travellers feel like petulant children — is repeated twice. Once we get underway from Leeds there are two more announcements — one generic and useless, and the other advertising the catering car. After this, on a normal journey, each stop — and there are up to five between Leeds and P’boro — is accompanied by three announcements. The first alerts passengers to the upcoming halt, and reminds us to “take our personal belongings with us” — surely the most inane of all the reminders. The second, on departure, is another unnecessarily lengthy announcement welcoming passengers to the train. The third again advertises the catering facilities — that is, after every stop, there is a separate announcement advertising the food and drink available on board. It makes a complete mockery of the idea that there is a quiet coach on these trains.
There are a few points worth noticing about this unhappy phenomenon.
– It wasn’t always like this. The frequency and length of announcements has increased dramatically in the five years that I’ve been travelling this route.
– It isn’t like this on every service. The East Midlands Trains services between P’boro and Norwich assault the ears with far less frequency, and some, like the Leeds to Nottingham train, mostly leave their passengers in peace, only making a racket when a station stop is approaching. (I’ve no idea how other mainline services compare — I’ll be travelling Nottingham to London tomorrow, so will listen out.) This makes the claim of rail operators — that their announcements are only in accordance with regulations — seem odd. (If there are “EU regulations” about this, as the Telegraph article says, then I can confirm that nobody has told the Poles or the Hungarians — the trains I took there last month were completely devoid of announcements. What’s more, other trains I’ve taken this year in Austria and Germany have only made announcements about upcoming stations.)
– Much of the information is either superfluous or could be delivered through another medium. This is my main gripe. If we need to be told incessantly that advance tickets must be valid for this exact service, then you should tell us via signs at the station, next to the trains, and at the seats. If we need to be reminded to take our personal belongings with us, then put a visible poster next to the train exit. And for other “information”, why not provide it an on-board pamphlet which is provided to every seat, like many airlines do? Then only one announcement — that passengers should see the magazine for relevant information — would be necessary.
I think that the way to get operators like NXEC to change their practices on announcements is to make a noise back at them.
I’d be interested to hear how the NXEC stories compare to other rail operators.
