With all sorts of the funding cuts hitting orchestras during the recent recession, there is still one aspect of classical music that local governments find valuable -- the music's unfailing ability to disperse loitering teenagers from public areas.

Whether its Handel piped into New York's Port Authority or Tchaikovsky at a public library in London, the sound of classical music is apparently so repellent to teenagers that it sends them scurrying away like frightened mice. Private institutions also find it useful: chains such as McDonald's and 7-Eleven, not to mention countless shopping malls around the world, have relied on classical music to shoo away potentially troublesome kids.

In the latest example of classical repulsion, the regional transit department in the Portland, Ore., area has been playing orchestral and operatic tunes over speakers at light-rail stations in an attempt to prevent vandalism and other crimes that result from teens having too much free time on their hands.

At one station, an aria from Bizet's "Carmen" serenaded commuters waiting to board. "There's no one that just hangs around," said one passenger to the Associated Press. Before the music "they wouldn't get on the train, that's how you'd know they were [loitering]."

There are different schools of thought on what makes classical music such an effective crime deterrent.