Dutch railway to launch app for finding empty seats in crowded trains

Dutch rail company NS is working on an expansion for its Travel Planner-app that will tell train passengers where to find empty seats in crowded trains, a spokesperson for NS said to AD. The company hopes that this function will be available from next year.

This idea was thought up by two NS analysts for an internal competition. They proposed using existing sensors, currently used to measure the weight of freight trains, for measuring the weight of passenger trains.

"If, for example, travelers on the platform see on their app that the third compartment is lighter than the others, they can assume that there are fewer people in it and that there may be another seat available", the NS spokesperson said to AD.