Quiet carriages maintain your train of thought

A bullet train leaves Shenyang North Railway Station in Shenyang, Liaoning province, for Beijing on Jan 22. YANG QING/XINHUA

The China Railway Group recently introduced a "quiet carriage" program on some of its high-speed trains. Passengers can choose the "quiet carriages" while booking tickets if they find the noise created by other passengers, from people talking loudly on smartphones, or surfing online on their digital gadgets, to children creating a din while playing and babies crying, intolerable on trains.

The enthusiastic response the program, piloted on some high-speed trains running between Chengdu and Chongqing from December 2020, has received from passengers shows people are fed up with the increasingly noisy traveling experience, which has become more serious with the popularization of smartphones, and want tumult-free train journeys.

In the "quiet carriages", not only are special signs posted to remind passengers to maintain silence but also the train conductors are instructed to pay more attention to keeping the decibel to the lowest possible level.

All the passengers in a "quiet carriage" are expected to strictly abide by the rules to maintain silence. For instance, they are required to turn their mobile phones to silent mode, leave the carriage when making or receiving a phone call, and turn off the external audio function of their digital gadgets.

In other words, booking a seat or berth in a "quiet carriage" means the passenger agrees to abide by these rules. Passengers traveling with babies or very young children are advised to not book seats in such carriages.

The introduction of the program, as some passengers said, reflects the CRG's response to passengers' demand and commitment to upgrading its services to adapt to the needs of the times. The program should be rolled out on other passenger trains and public transport vehicles, too, such as the subway, in which "cool" and "mildly cool" subway cars during summer have already been introduced in some cities.

Besides, the fact that many bullet train carriages don't have "quiet carriages" does not mean passengers are free to create commotion on trains. Although it is difficult to maintain total silence on trains, people need to respect fellow passengers' needs, by not making a racket or disturbing others in any other way. And parents or adult relatives traveling with children by train should set a good example for minors by behaving themselves and following the code of conduct in public places.