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No Kissing Allowed at This Train Stop!
February 17, 2009 12:38 PM
By MAEVA BAMBUCK, ABC News London
A train station in the north of England became all the buzz this week after a "No Kissing" sign was installed at the station entrance.
The sign was placed at the northern entrance of the Bank Quay station in Warrington to stop people from using the taxi ramp as a "kiss and ride" zone and causing delays. The sign was believed to have made its appearance on Friday at the unveiling of a £1 million revamp of the station.
Newspapers and blogs have had a field day of the killjoy quirkiness of the situation. “OK now what is our country really coming to here?” wrote one Facebook group calling itself "Say No to the No Kissing Ban." “We aren’t even allowed to kiss our loved ones at a station in Warrington?”
In reality the sign is nothing new. “We first reported on it in 1998,” Warrington Guardian news editor Gareth Dunning said. In the station refurbishment, the 10-year-old sign was replaced by a new one, which got people talking. “It seems that people didn’t notice the sign before,” Dunning said, “although they would have had to, if they commuted every day.”
The no-kissing sign is apparently an American idea. In 1979 the town of Deerfield, Ill., pioneered a no-kissing zone at the local train station to ease congestion from people expanding their goodbyes.
Public displays of affection are not completely banned from the Bank Quay station. Virgin Rail, which operates the station, says passengers can pay to park their cars and kiss as they please.
“It is a fairly congested station,” Colin Daniels, chief executive of the Warrington chamber of commerce, told The Independent. “With these 'no-kissing' signs we are pointing out that we don't want people doing that right outside the front of the station. If they want to linger and say a longer goodbye they can do that in the 'kissing zone' where there is a limited amount of parking."
So are Warrington commuters respecting the sign? “They find it amusing, really,” Dunning said. “No one is taking it too seriously.”
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February 17, 2009 in Maeva Bambuck | Permalink | User Comments (0)
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