Here’s something I’ve thought about in relation to free newspapers. Some people get annoyed when they see free newspapers left on the train and the platform. I used to disapprove of littering of this kind too.
However, I once heard someone on the train complaining about the selfish people who took their newspapers away with them. ‘Why don’t they leave them behind so that others can read them too?’ they grumped.
Now that I’ve taken the train after rush hour and have felt the disappointment of not finding any newspapers, I too appreciate the amenity of ‘littered’ newspapers.
I wonder if people leave their papers because they’re lazy or out of thoughtfulness? I suspect it’s laziness in most cases.
I’m very grateful when they get left behind but it really is littering… and I only pick up the ones that look ‘clean’! There’s only the Metro in Birmingham… way more boring taking the train there 😎
I’ll SMS a reply to you a bit closer to the date, I have another festival to prepare for between now and then!
I was going to comment when I first read it, but I was too lazy. All that I was going to say was that I love when the papers are left on the tram/train and I always leave them for other people to read. But I am spurred into commenting because I was on the 86 tram today and the tram driver got out at Parliament station and got about 30 copies and distributed them throughout the tram!
Wow! That’s really… strange. Maybe the tram was ahead of schedule and he had time to kill? Or maybe the driver was feeling exuberant for some reason (Pay rise? Marriage proposal?). Or maybe news is extremely important to him and he thinks it’s extremely important to everyone else as well…
(Maybe he was IN one of the newspaper articles.)
I don’t know, he seemed to just be a guy who liked to impart information. Some of the Nicholson St tram lines are getting ripped up on the weekend and he kept announcing that information, plus he was one of those drivers who tell you what each stop is and what other trams/trains are avaialbe from that stop… not many people do that these days. When he was giveing out the papers he just said ‘here’s something for you to read on the way home’. He left them on empty seats too, so I guess he doesn’t mind having to clean them up.
I too have ruminated on this topic, and came to the conclusion that, so long as the paper is left in good condition, I approve of the practice.
Newspapers are a quasi-public good (a club good, to use the Samuelsonian terminology), and once you have “consumed” the information in them it’s beneficial to leave them for other people to also “consume”, so long as you leave them in a state that doesn’t reduce the use of a non-newspaper reader, i.e., torn bits of paper all over the seats.
Interestingly, I can’t remember very many instances of up-market papers being left behind. It’s usually the free rags (MX, or the London equivalent) or the tabloids (Herald Sun, BILD over here in Germany, I’ve forgotten what I found in England. Some rubbish). Since it’s hardly likely that the readers of these publications have made the connection to social surplus and the readers of, say, the Financial Review haven’t, I posit two reasons:
1) It takes longer to read quality papers, so people are unlikely to have finished them by the time they finish their commute.
2) People ascribe some value to their papers above and beyond their information. I.e. although they have read them, they still want to keep them. Hmmm, perhaps it’s something to do with the endowment effect (things you possess are automatically worth more than things you don’t possess, even if the items are identical).
I could probably just have posted this comment on my own blog, couldn’t I?
Alica, I have ‘met’ public transport drivers like the chatty man on your tram. Usually, the Tube drivers are so muffled, mumbling and indistinct, I don’t know why they bother making announcements. Occasionally, there’s someone who speaks really clearly and is always warning us to ‘Mind the gap’ and ‘Move right down inside the carriage.’
Martin, I’ve been listening to a podcast with an economist talk about happiness. One of the things he said was that people value things more the more they’ve paid for them (e.g. ‘I love Armani socks, I love then ten times more than normal socks because they cost ten times as much.’).
People probably love their paid newspapers a bit more than the free ones.
fair enough people but aren’t you forgetting about the environmental impact of leaving your newspaper on the trains and tubes?
Over 100 tons of free newspapers are distributed around London every day, and the vast majority of these are going straight to landfill precisely because people leave them behind on the public transport network. (See http://www.projectfreesheet.com for more detail)
There are now so many free papers being handed out, that the public transport network can no longer cope. Hence recycling rates are falling on the tube and train network, and we as local tax payers are subsidising the newspaper publishers.
This is because local councils have to pay for every ton of waste they take to landfill, and they are now taking a lot of newspapers straight to landfill.