Reinvent the meaning of 'crowded' in Covid-19 times

Passengers perception of crowd density within public transport has changed because of the new six feet society. The challenge is to (re)discover what travelers consider as quiet-moderate-busy themselves and to what extent they would be interested in such information. We explored the technical feasibility, business viability and passenger desirability of a ‘drukte-indicator’ to suit the national requirements and the changing COVID-19 landscape.

The project executed for innOVatieroute has been divided into 3 streams: Over-all initiatives, Low-tech prototypes (e.g. 'Stoepbord', a poster showing occupancy in the metro) and Algoritm. The over-all project is still ongoing. The 'Stoepbord' was placed at 3 metro stations in Rotterdam and together with various surveys and interviews provided valueable insights in travelers behaviour and perception. It confirmed our assumption that travellers (changing) perception of crowded-ness is higher than before corona and enabled us to build an algoritm that allows better prediction and more flexibility in travel schedules.

RET was (one of) the first Public Transport providers to truly implement crowd indication. The different initiatives we're working on have one thing in common: they all have the ability to make a prediction, but the best way to move forward is by making a combination of multiple sources, therefore we continue to build and improve initiatives and the algorithm together with InnOVatieRoute.