Stairway dynamic lighting for rail stations

The flow of passengers on and around stairways is one of the key issues that impacts the passenger experience, with congestion leading to increased journey disruption and greater risk of injury. The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) recently reported that in the 2019-2020 period, 194 injuries were attributed to slips, trips and falls in railway stations. Beyond the obvious distress experienced by the victims of these injuries, there is also a financial impact that reaches millions of pounds a year.

DW Windsor has been a long-time supplier of lighting equipment to the Rail Industry and with a newly formed sister company Urban Control, a coalition of experienced innovators with First Group (owner of GWR train operating company), the University of Nottingham’s Human Factors Research Group was assembled under the aegis of the RSSB.

DW Windsor developed a bespoke module for their Garda illuminated handrail that integrated colour-changing LEDs to enable dynamic lighting choreographies such as blue/white chasing lights. Urban Control’s Innovation & Development unit created a Bluetooth Mesh network infrastructure and integrated it into their UrbanMaster CMS with new applications to manage the lights remotely.

The test installation has demonstrated that the Dynamic Lighting intervention does influence the behaviour of passengers and shows improvements in the way they use the stairway to and off the trsain platform.

Ingredients:
UrbanMaster Mesh
Garda handrail
Vaio light rail