(The following article by Samuel Bruchey was posted on the Newsday website on June 2.)
NEW YORK — The way Norma Schreier sees it, a little corporal punishment would straighten out even the most hardened courtesy offenders on the Long Island Rail Road.
“I really think someone should walk around and smack them,” said Schreier, 74, who lives in Manhattan and commutes by train to New Hyde Park.
While Schreier confesses such solutions are best confined to fantasy, other riders had more practical suggestions to rid bad behavior from the rails. Their suggestions ranged from summonses to quiet cars where cell phones, pagers and loud talking are banned.
The LIRR Commuter’s Council also has its own suggestion: posters on train cars and stations encouraging courteous behavior. To come up with the poster motif, the eight council members, who have anointed themselves courtesy cops, got on the trains starting yesterday, armed with note pads to jot down their pet peeves. The date of each ride will be noted and the nature of the offense detailed.
The informal survey will continue through the end of July. At the end of the summer, the council plans to share its findings with the LIRR and will sponsor a poster design competition among school children.
One “bad behavior” spy is council member Jim McGovern. On board the 6:50 a.m. from Plandome, the lanky Manhattan banker fits right in with the conservative early-morning commuting crowd.
During his inaugural ride yesterday, McGovern kept watch for discarded napkins and inappropriate cell phone conversations. “It doesn’t take long for people to start behaving badly,” said McGovern, 35, as he took a slow sip from his coffee and darted his eyes across the car. “You see it all the time.”
As he scanned the train car – alert and narrow-eyed – McGovern, also a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, confessed that gentle posters and announcements from conductors, which are routinely made, may not be enough to tame unruly riders. “It’s not something you can just fix,” he said. “It’s like mowing your lawn, you’ve got to deal with it all the time.”
Dennis Reardon, 52, a LIRR conductor for the past 27 years, said one way to enforce courtesy would be for police to issue summonses. “You start giving out summons, and this behavior stops,” he said. Unfortunately, he said, MTA police have a limited presence on trains, so many conductors don’t feel confident confronting unruly riders.
LIRR spokesman Brian Dolan said MTA police ride trains daily and intervene when warranted, but there is no law to allow police to enforce courtesy.
Several commuters said yesterday they favored quiet cars, and most were unenthusiastic about imposing a fine. “I think it’s up to other riders to let people know when they are out of line,” said Adam Leo, 27, of East Meadow, as he waited for a train in Penn Station.