Talking trams improve accessibility for visually impaired passengers

What are talking trams?

Talking trams use an innovative acoustic announcement system where the external skin of the vehicle acts as a flat-panel loudspeaker. Electromagnetic exciters are built into the side walls of trams or buses and transmit vibrations to the outer skin of the vehicle. In that way, trams can easily announce line numbers, stops, and destinations.

As opposed to external speakers, the sound quality of electromagnetic exciters is significantly better and can therefore be more targeted. Moreover, the environment is unaffected by noise pollution thanks to the noise-dependent volume control and the intelligent night-time reduction of the volume.

Exciting features

• Regional-specific pronunciation features can be achieved through individual adaptation and storage in an exception library
• The system can be expanded thanks to a powerful processor and M12 Ethernet connection (e.g. control by IBIS VDV301 (IBIS over Ethernet))
• Noise-dependent volume control and intelligent lowering of volume at night avoids noise pollution.

The talking trams were created in collaboration with the Erfurt Blind Association, the Erfurt transport company and the Erfurt University of Applied Sciences.

Why do you need talking trams?

Speech intelligibility

The electromagnetic exciters create a broad, almost phase-linear reproduction over 7 octaves <100 Hz to> 10 kHz without disturbing resonance effects. This particularly guarantees high quality speech reproduction. The noise-dependent volume control (NDVC + max 12dB) enables the volume of the external announcements to be adapted to the ambient noise and thus increases the intelligibility of the announcement.

Resident-friendly

There is a sharp drop in sound pressure level outside the bus stop area thanks to the type and placement of the exciters, the noise-dependent volume control (NDVC + max 12dB) and the volume night reduction (max 12 dB).

Future-proof system

The existing power reserves make it possible to integrate other functionalities, such as an on-board computer for passenger information, an automatic passenger counting (APC) system, video surveillance, etc. This reduces costs and space.

Talking trams are useful for…

• Passengers in general, and more specifically, visually impaired people
• Operators that focus on noise reduction, accessibility and passenger comfort
• Passenger Information managers who want to make their messages more targeted and efficient