Why quiet carriages don’t work, and how they mightbe made to?
安静车厢的推广之途屡屡受挫。原因何在，如何改之？
QUIET carriages on trains are a nice idea: travellers voluntarily switch phones to silent, turnstereos off and keep chatter to a minimum. In reality, there is usually at least one inanebabbler to break the silence.
A couple of problems prevent peaceful trips. First, there is a sorting problem: somepassengers end up in the quiet carriage by accident and are not aware of the rules. Second,there is a commitment problem: noise is sometimes made by travellers who choose the quietcarriage but find an important call hard to ignore.
The train operators are trying to find answers. Trains in Queensland Australia, are havingpermanent signs added to show exactly what is expected; a British operator has invested insignal-jamming technology to prevent phone calls. Microeconomics suggests anotherapproach: putting a price on noise.
Fining people for making a din would surely dissuade the polluter and is a neat solution intheory, but it requires costly monitoring and enforcement. Another tack would be to use pricesto separate quiet and noisy passengers—in effect, creating a market for silence. A simple ideawould be to sell access to the quiet carriage as an optional extra when the ticket is bought.Making the quiet coach both an active choice and a costly one would dissuade many of thosewho do not value a peaceful ride.
Charging may also solve the commitment problem. This is particularly tricky, as attitudes tonoise can change during the journey. Some passengers would pay the quiet premium but stillchatter away when some vital news arrives. Schemes that reward the silent—a ratings systemamong fellow passengers, for example—could help. The idea is that losing your hard-wonreputation offsets the short-term gain from using the phone. But such a system also fails thesimplicity test.
A 2010 book by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton argues that “norms”—feelings about howeveryone should behave—also play a role in decision-making. Charging a price, even if just atoken amount, means the quiet carriage becomes a service that fellow passengers have bought,not just a preference they have expressed. Perhaps different norms would come into play,encouraging calm. If not, a personal bubble is always an option: noise-cancelling headphonesstart at around $50.
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