The nuisance of people playing music on trains could face increased enforcement, as the Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, agreed to look at what could be done.

TfL’s bylaws already prohibit playing music or streaming content aloud on the network without permission, but enforcement is effectively left to fellow passengers to ask people to stop. As a result, most of us have probably faced the choice between being the grumpy person who asks someone to plug their headphones in or looking at the person and deciding that moving carriages might be the safer option.

In the recent Mayor’s Question Time, Andrew Boff AM, questioning the Mayor, pointed out that TfL’s own research shows that 70 per cent of 1,000 customers surveyed said they find loud music and phone calls without headphones a nuisance. He called on TfL to take further action to curb the nuisance, either by increasing publicity to encourage a change in behaviour or by increasing enforcement to stop it.

The Mayor said that TfL’s uniformed transport support enforcement officers will interact with customers regarding mobile usage where necessary, including using enforcement when appropriate. However, most people travelling on public transport will notice that it’s a very rare occurrence to see staff telling people to turn down the music. The Mayor said that there’s been an average of just one warning or prosecution per year over the past five years.

He also highlighted TfL’s TravelKind campaign, which encourages customers to be considerate of one another when using public transport.

The Mayor did agree that this is a problem through.

Last year, TfL introduced a new phase of the campaign to encourage customers to use headphones. The campaign will return to the London Underground this summer to further raise awareness and reinforce the message of using headphones.

Persons of a certain age may recall the Love Is campaign from 2002, which used the famous cartoon sketches to persuade people to be more considerate.

Although posters are an option, the Mayor ruled out adding tannoy messages, as there are limits to how many safety and behaviour messages can be played, and candidly, being bombarded with tannoy messages can be just as annoying as hearing the latest TikTok videos blasting down the train carriage.

The Mayor confirmed though that he is “more than happy to look at, within reason, anything we can do to try to educate Londoners.”

He also confirmed that TfL will look at how the issue is handled in other countries to see if there are any lessons to be learned.

In the meantime, the scourge of people deciding their taste in music is so wonderful that everyone within earshot should be subjected to it will continue.