Vienna's metro hands out 14,000 deodorants to passengers amid heatwave

A metro train in Moscow, Russia. In Vienna, Austria, temperatures have hit 35C on the U6. Photo / AP

Anyone who has endured London's Central Line during the heatwave will doubtless sympathise with their fellow commuters in Vienna, where things have got so bad the authorities have started handing out free deodorant on the city's U-Bahn trains.

While London Underground gave out free water to help travellers cope with its sauna-like trains in 2016, in Austria it appears the public transport company is more concerned with unsavoury odours.

Staff handed out free deodorants to passengers on Vienna's notoriously stuffy U6 line this week, the Daily Telegraph reports.

It appears the initiative was popular: the entire stock of 14,000 deodorant sprays was grabbed in a single day, and plans for a second distribution have had to be shelved.

The deodorants were "torn out of our hands," Daniel Amman, a spokesman for the Wiener Linien public transport company said.

But he insisted Viennese commuters were no more smelly than those anywhere else. "This was primarily intended as a consolation," he said. "High temperatures can also make one more aware of odours."

Temperatures of 35C have been recorded on Vienna's U6 — just shy of the Central Line's 35.5C, but still well beyond the EU limit of 30C for transporting cattle.

But the situation on most of Vienna's U-Bahn system is considerably more comfortable than London's Tube. Most of the lines are air conditioned, and only on the ageing U6 do passengers still have to endure the heat.

Even there, half of the U6's trains have air conditioning, unlike on London's Central Line, whose 100-year-old infrastructure makes adding it impossible.

Where the Central Line gets so hot because it is deep beneath London, the main problem on the U6 is that trains run overground for sections, heating up under the Vienna sun.

Older trains have been fitted with tinted windows and ventilation grilles which the public transport company says will lower temperatures by as much as 4C.

While climate change and the unusually hot summer have been blamed for the problem, figures suggest it may have more to do with a change in what passengers are prepared to put up with.

Eight years ago, Der Standard newspaper recorded a temperature of 42.6C on a packed Vienna bus. Today, all the city's buses are air conditioned and such hellish commutes are a thing of the past.