The side effects of banning noise on public transport

If you're looking for peace and quiet, the London Underground shouldn't be your first port of call. You'd think that would be obvious. It’s public transport, for starters; the guarantee that other people will be there is in the name.

- Olivia Petter, The Independent

And travelling with other people comes with a few other guarantees, like idle chatter, wafts of body odour and, if you're British, the acute discomfort that comes from sitting inches away from someone while pretending they don't exist. Then there's the noise.

The rattle of the carriage when it starts to speed up. The screech of wheels as they spin on tired tracks, and through even more tired tunnels. In a fairly new development, there are also the sounds of TikTok, Spotify, Netflix and Instagram, all rolled into one chaotic cacophony. Now, thanks to its ubiquity, that latter component has a name, “bare beating”, and Sadiq Khan is trying to put an end to it. On Tuesday, the mayor of London launched a new campaign encouraging people on public transport to wear headphones to prevent them from disturbing other passengers with noise from their phones. Posters will be rolled out across Tube stations and bus stops throughout the autumn, with messaging reminding people to keep their sounds to themselves.