‘Volume has to be controlled’

One local resident from Preston Road, had just spent 25 minutes travelling on a bus to Harrow town centre from his home. He said: "The main problem is the equipment that people bring onto buses nowadays. Before it was the same with ghetto blasters and now they have mobile phones.

"It seems to be a competition, people can't exist without extraneous noise.

"And there is nothing you can do, you can't confront it. I have just had 25 minutes of a man playing his music out of his mobile phone."

The local resident also told of another experience he had while on a train to Watford. He explained a young girl got onto a train wearing an iPod, when a man got on and sat down. He asked her to turn her music down, but found himself being sworn at in an expletive-laden tirade.

Another man, who works in St John's Road, Harrow, and lives in Amersham told of how "a couple of bad experiences four years ago" had made him "use his car more".

He said: "The train had stopped at Harrow-on-the-Hill station and I got on and looked at a man sitting down and he verbally abused me."

But Anthony Wood of Harrow Transport User's Association said: "I think that the volume has to be controlled. But if people choose to listen to music through a personal stereo then why take that away from them? It is the volume that causes the problem.

"If people can't be trusted to use them sensibly then I suppose they have to be banned.

"But the majority of people are innocent."

Mr Wood also explained that the majority of complaints the organisation received were about the behaviour of schoolchildren using public transport and he highlighted the powerlessness of staff when they are faced with antisocial behaviour.

He said: "Drivers are not allowed to leave their cab so they have to try and control the situation with persuasion and psychology and if that doesn't work then they can press the red button."