At no time have more attempts been made to make passengers feel comfortable and safe on a public bus or train. Ulrike Bjerno reports.

While public transportation is able to offer reduced commuter time and great ecological advantages, travellers will rarely choose to break their love affairs with cars unless public transport is considered an equal or better alternative.
From relaxing background music to light and warm coloured interior, or even aroma fragrances operating companies work hard on making their vehicles attractive. This investment is supposed to pay off through increasing usage of their rail lines.
Video surveillance has the dual benefits of protecting the installed assets such as the hi-tech or luxurious additional systems installed upon these trains and at the same time creating an ambience of controlling the carriage compartments against anti-social behaviour.
Video surveillance has been tested alongside many other security focussed alternatives in the industry for almost 10 years and the results are crystal clear. Only the CCTV solution has successfully reduced vandalism (an average 75 per cent).
Further to this surveys have shown around 70 per cent of the passengers appreciate the investment in their safety.

Standard equipment

The increasing request for trains with video surveillance systems is a development which will undoubtedly effect the rail industry, it is greatly thought that within ten years the installation of mobile will become the industry standard. The installation of video surveillance equipment on board trains is apparent for a number of reasons firstly the protection of company assets and secondly and arguably most importantly the protection of the environment and creation of 'safe zones' within the realm of public transport.

Anti-social behaviour

The impact and acceptance of CCTV has greatly increased the pull factor on behalf of the rail companies. High profile prosecutions based on recorded CCTV evidence has underlined the importance of a societies need to protect itself against anti-social behaviour, while hand in hand protecting the huge investments made by the rail companies against the threat of graffiti and vandalism.
The recent advent of digital technology has made the process of passenger and asset protection more simple and generally more efficient.
In recent years the security industry has witnessed the digital revolution.
The past five years we have seen a migration from simple analogue solutions such as vhs recorders to digital recorders that use digital technology which stores video footage on hard discs rather than tapes. This allows systems to record automatically for an increased number of hours without members of staff having to change video tapes, further to this quality of reproduction is much better, allowing security staff or police to identify culprits of criminal activity with greater ease. The difference between analogue and digital storage systems could be compared to the difference between the motor car and the horse and carriage, it is faster more efficient, more intuitive and user friendly underlining it«s acceptance in the modern age of the public transport systems.

Security in the rail industry

RP Security has become a leader in the world of mobile security systems based upon a number of unique points, first to the market philosophies and market sector specialisation top name a few.
Recently the equipment manufactured by RP has been installed in the UK's Newcastle metro with great success. Plans for the UK include new tram projects (RP has installed the biggest tramway tenders won in Europe to date).

Digital technology

RP Security is seemingly surfing the digital technology wave offering clients a full range of products custom designed to suit the mobile environments, and as the demand in the UK market continues to rise RP's UK subsidiary intends to meet that demand.
RP offers high quality systems designed for mobile applications, made in Germany, with 60 per cent US contents, meeting the US and European standards, such as EN60950:2000, IEC60950:1999, UL60950, EN2-245-EWG-95-54EG and EN50155 and EN50132-7 (for rail vehicles).

Enquiry No 42

Ulrike Bjerno is with RP. Sicherheitssysteme GmbH (RP. Security), Flensburg, Germany. www.rp-security.comRP Security has subsidiaries in Sweden, France Spain and the Netherlands