London’s Tube is worryingly noisy

“TAKE THE TWOPENNY tube and avoid all anxiety,” reads a vintage advertisement for the Central London Railway (CLR), an underground railway that operated in Britain’s capital during the early 1900s. The poster, dated 1905, would seem curious to Londoners today. The city’s subway system, a 400km stretch of tracks known as “the Tube”, has much to induce anxiety. Anti-social behaviour and overcrowding are the biggest irritations, according to a recent survey. Next is too much noise.

Indeed, noise levels on the Tube may be dangerously high. Eave, a London-based firm that designs hearing-protection gear, recently collected data on noise across the entire network. Data for the loudest tube lines—Victoria, Bakerloo, Jubilee and Northern—were shared with The Economist. They show that noise inside Underground carriages often reach 85 decibels (dB). This is the same level that, if sustained for eight hours a day, obliges British employers to provide workers with hearing protection. On the Victoria Line, the city’s most-used route, there is a five-minute stretch where noise levels average 90dB, about as loud as a lawn mower. The loudest journey through central London reaches a peak of 109dB, equivalent to a helicopter taking off.