As part of the ongoing improvements to the bus services in and around Hammersmith, London Transport will officialy open Hammersmith's Interim Bus Station on Saturday 16th February 2008. This site is to help ease congestion of the very busy existing bus station.

Chris Eleftheriou, Regional Operations Manager for London Buses, said: "The extended bus station will create more space for passengers, who will also benefit from step-free access between all parts of the bus station, the Underground connections and the shopping mall."

Hammersmith Bus Station Information Pod

Once again, we provided a "state of the art" PA system to this site. It uses the established Application Solutions Ltd range of DSP Router, amplifer modules and frames, and microphones, including the bespokely made Station Masters console, featuring message recording and playback facilities.

Main Microphone Console, featuring recording and playback interface

The site features six traditional bus stops, each stop individually or collectively addressable from the microphones. Each bus stop also has built in ambient noise sensing (ANS), to make sure the announcments are always audible over background noise, but only enough, so as to minimise noise nuisance.

The ANS also controls the system volumes of the speakers around the general walkways and thoroughfares of the site. Because it works very locally, only the stops that need an increase in volume to aid intelligibilty, are actually boosted, leaving quiet areas just as they are - quiet!

  One of the six stainless steel bus shelters, with matching stainless speakers

Another solution to avoiding noise nuisance, was to increase the number of speakers! This seems to contradict itself, but by supplying more, smaller speakers, the coverage is more consistent, without loud hotspots. This means that each individual speaker does less, so the overall coverage is improved, but at a reduced volume. This means messages are easily intelligible, without being intrusive.

The site's PA system is also linked to the existing station, which is part of the Undeground Station and Shopping Centre. This allows the site's staff to use the CCTV to monitor the new site, from the existing office, and make announcments as required.

  Speakers mounted on Lamp Posts

On completion of the build, we also took the opportunity to implement extensive staff training to ensure any bus station controller who happens to be working at this site, is fully able to use its advanced features. This was a great opportunity, which the Bus Station Staff seemed to appreciate, and found helpful.

All of the feedback was that the system was very striaghtforward to operate, and would prove useful as a tool in helping them perform there duties.

  Main PA Rack, incorporating 24 hours of battery backup

This was a site that suffered a number of delays in its build, mostly because of the hi-tech materials used, and there subsequent extended lead times. Despite having to adjust our schedules several times, to accomodate knock on delays in the build of the pod, we managed to complete the project to its revised scheduling and to budget.