Passengers on the London transport network may be booted off their train or bus if they’re caught playing music out loud or taking calls on speakerphone, under plans mooted by the capital’s Tory mayoral candidate.
Susan Hall vowed to revise the Transport for London (TfL) conditions of carriage to include a ban on those blaring music and videos.
Under her plan, TfL users caught on speakerphone or subjecting the rest of the carriage to their music would face a fine up to £1,000 or being taken off the network entirely.
The current rules state that under-16s with concession Oyster cards are not permitted to listen to music without earphones.
However, 69-year-old Ms Hall would expand the rules to include all Tube, bus and other TfL service users.
The Tory hopeful said that passengers “deserve a safe and quiet journey home”, adding that “under Sadiq Khan, the London Underground is less safe and less civil than it used to be”.
She continued: “I will overhaul the rules to ban disruptive anti-social behaviour and ensure that existing rules are enforced better by TfL staff.”
A spokesman for the incumbent mayor Sadiq Khan said that enforcing new rules on antisocial behaviour of this kind would be “very difficult”.
According to The Telegraph, the spokesman added: “With millions of journeys every day on London’s transport network, we should all be considerate of other passengers around us, including the noise coming from our personal devices.
“Implementing formal restrictions would likely be very difficult, requiring bus and Tube staff to police how passengers operated their individual phones. It would require huge extra spending on enforcement and put impossible pressures on hard-working transport staff.”
As well as her TfL regulation reforms, Ms Hall has also pledged to ramp up the number of police officers by 1,500 and open two new “police bases” in every London borough.
She said: “Londoners have been forced to watch as Sadiq Khan has shut down police stations, leaving us at the mercy of criminals.
“Every day, when I listen to Londoners across the city, I hear and feel their fear about spiralling crime affecting them, their families and their local communities.
“If you place your faith in me as Mayor, I will stop the closure of any further police stations, open two police bases in every single borough to ensure there is always a police presence local to you, and I will recruit 1,500 new police officers, getting them back on the beat fighting crime.
“It is just not good enough for Sadiq Khan to underfund our police, when he has poured millions down the drain on beach parties, trade union bailouts and PR stunts. No Mayor should ever prioritise saving money over saving lives, and that is precisely why we need to vote for change on May 2nd.”
