Moving away from my normal topic of software development, I just wanted to vent some annoyance about "Quiet Carriages".  On the rail service I use, the operator designates 2 of the 8 carriages in the train as "quiet".  They request that you don't use mobile phones or personal audio equipment in those carriages.

Now, here's a non-exhaustive list of the things that other people can do to annoy you while on public transport, in no particular order...

• Hum or whistle a tune
• Sniff loudly and incessantly
• Clear the throat loudly and incessantly
• Laugh out loud for no apparent reason
• Rustle their newspaper
• Get up and walk around for no apparent reason
• Converse on a mobile phone
• Converse with fellow passengers
• Make lots of beeps from their laptop computer
• Type loudly on their laptop computer
• Eat smelly food
• Suffer from unpleasant body-odour
• Sit next to you and take up too much room
• Listen to music through earphones that emit that "tickety-tick" noise
• Spread their things all over your table
• Tap hands or feet in time with some unheard music
• etc. etc.

I've certainly experienced all of these things on British trains, and it didn't take me long to produce that list.

Why then would a train operator pick on just two of those potentially anti-social activities and forbid them in 25% of every train?  I say potentially because I've certainly seen people use mobile phones responsibly - in silent mode, keeping their voice down, keeping calls short - and I've sat next to people using personal audio equipment that emitted no external noise detectable to me.

I've also seen a respectable-looking man run the length of a carriage to berate some unfortunate whose mobile phone rang in a quiet carriage.  The poor guy didn't even answer his phone, he was just unlucky enough for it to ring, and he silenced it as quickly as he could.  The elder vigilante wore a maniacal expression as he leapt into action and exclaimed loudly "this is supposed to be a quiet carriage".  Now, whose action was the more distracting for his fellow passengers?  In case you're wondering, the phone user wasn't me, but it might have been.

I use these trains during peak times, and frankly you're lucky to get a seat at all.  For the train operator to suggest you have a choice of sitting in a quiet carriage or not is ridiculous.  They just make no sense to me at all.  I suppose most people of ticket-buying age can remember a time before mobiles, and before the walkman, so maybe this is an attempt to outlaw the new-fangled tools of distraction.  I think when our children are grown up the quiet carriage will be a thing of the past, remembered as a quaint curiosity like when all cars had to be preceded by a man waving a red flag.

A lot of people either want or need to work while on a train, but surely most of those people work in open-plan offices?  I can't believe a train carriage is a more distracting environment than your average office.  Perhaps I'm lucky in that I'm able to switch-off from my environment, and so other people's phone calls don't distract me at all.  Even if they did I'd have to accept that my distraction was at least as much my fault as theirs.

In the end, it's a sad commentary on our society that a train operator has to publish rules of politeness.  I would be happier though if the rules were about courtesy and respectfulness in general rather than singling-out specific devices, and if we're instructing people on courtesy we should give equal effort to encouraging tolerance.  It's a two-way street.