Case Studies - Transportation

It's All Gone Classical - "Going Underground"

Brixton Tube station is the southern terminus of the Victoria tube line and has the honour of being the ninth busiest station on the London Underground Network.

An average of 27,000 passengers travel through the station every day. First time visitors can feel a little intimidated because things can get mighty lively around the station entrance, with drug dealers, religious fanatics, incense sellers, hustlers, dodgy CD sellers, handbag 'dippers' and random alcoholics all adding 'character' to your journey.

So can classical music make Brixton Underground station a nicer place to work or travel through?

In January 2006, Secure Vision was awarded the contract to install public address systems in the ticket halls of originally three stations, one of which was Brixton. In a novel attempt to drive disorderly teenagers off the station, London Underground started piping endless recitals of 'uncool' classical music in the booking hall of this very busy station.

Armed with recordings of Pavarotti recitals, Vivaldi and Mozart, London Underground discovered that this resulted in a 33% drop in abuse against staff.

A LU spokeswoman explains: 'This is aimed at youths, mainly young teenagers who hang about at stations. The science seems to be that the music is unfamiliar to them and also that it's considered uncool.'

Industrial type MP3 players are pre - loaded with the recordings and either interfaced with the existing PA systems (ticket hall and waiting room zones) or they can be installed as stand alone systems.

Part of the design made provision for a volume control knob that would reduce the sound levels but never to the point that the music cannot be heard!

The MP3 players are connected to the internet so that the play list can be changed to avoid months of repetitive tracks or to suit the seasonal festivities, you can imagine Christmas in the Brixton ticket hall...

From all accounts this project has proved to be a huge success with a large reduction of assaults on LUL staff. The first phase of this project also included Secure Vision installing systems at Kilburn and Vauxhall Stations.

Since this initial installation Secure Vision has gone on to install system at 30 more stations across the London Underground Network.