The Disconnect Is Etiquette

Avoiding the traffic-clogged Cahuenga Pass is reason enough to take the newly opened Red Line subway from the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood or downtown. But if you’re still not convinced, consider this:

It’s a cell-phone-free zone.

For 30 blissful minutes a day--twice that, counting the return trip--you can travel deep beneath the reach of the radio frequencies that carry cellular phone signals.

That’s right. As you glide along underground, you can be confident that, here, at least, those ubiquitous cell phones strapped to the belts and tucked into the briefcases of your fellow commuters will not ring, chirp or break into a tinny version of the “William Tell” Overture. For an entire half-hour, you will not be forced to endure secondhand chatter conducted at a volume that’s come to be known as “cell yell,” as impossible to ignore as secondhand smoke.

Imagine.

Instead, you can conduct an actual face-to-face conversation with the person sitting next to you. You can read. You can think. You can nap.

For now, anyway.

Savor this cell phone cessation while you can. Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials are studying ways to bring cellular service to the city’s 17-mile subway system because some commuters complain about being “out of touch.”

Consider the rolled eyeballs and pointed glances that go ignored when cell phones ring in theaters, restaurants, museums, even libraries, and you’ve got to ask yourself just who’s out of touch with what. If only good manners could be transmitted along with radio signals.