Melbourne's trains are uniquely loud for urban environments, using strong blasts of their horns when leaving or passing a platform. This is a major impact on amenity and health so the reason for their use needs to be clear and reasonable.  We currently don't know why they are used almost constantly, just general "safety". Even though their overuse when there is no danger may be undermining safety.

Living next to South Yarra station in a high rise apartment, I recorded 50 hours across six sessions in April 2026:

• Peak of 111 dB(A), comparable to industrial machinery
• 374 horns above 72 dB(A)
• 122 horns between 10pm and 6am

Most revealing finding of all: intensity varies by up to 39 dB at the same station, under the same conditions.  If there was a point to the horns, they would be closer in consistency.

We have witnessed the horns being used without anyone on or near the platform, and certainly no one on or near the tracks. South Yarra is not unique. Residents near Footscray Station and other inner Melbourne stations have observed the same pattern. Wherever the network has evolved beyond the conditions that originally justified blanket horn use, the protocols haven't followed.

This isn't about trains being noisy. Trains are part of city life and that's fine. This is about discretionary noise of horn use that cannot be justified by any specific safety requirement at these locations that causes harm to tens of thousands of people living near Melbourne's urban rail corridor.

Chronic exposure to noise above 65 dB is associated with elevated cardiovascular risk, sleep disruption, and cognitive impairment in children. Peak events at 90–111 dB represent severe exposures. The people absorbing this cost are the same people who chose to live near public transport. This is the exact behaviour every urban planning policy is trying to encourage. We should not be penalising them for it.

We are asking the Department of Transport and Planning to:

• Require Metro Trains and V/Line to provide written documentation of the safety evidence of horn use at each station
• Revise driver training to eliminate discretionary horn use where no specific safety hazard can be identified

I wrote to the Department of Transport and Planning Secretary asking three questions: what 'minimum necessary use' actually means at a station with no level crossings, whether the 39 dB variation in horn intensity is consistent with that standard, and whether any review of driver practice at this location has ever been conducted. Thirty days later, we have received no response.

This petition is the only way to get department officials to take a fairly simple request seriously.

Sign if you live near any Melbourne station and have wondered why the horns are still going.