Skip to main content

Bluetooth aids rail passenger monitoring

In an effort to reduce congestion and improve passenger flow at railway stations in the Netherlands, Danish software company Blip Systems and Dutch railway consultants NPC have teamed up to monitor passenger movements using Bluetooth and wi-fi tracking. In an eight-week study at Groningen railway station, Blip Systems has installed 22 of its BlipTrack sensors which anonymously detect wi-fi and Bluetooth-enabled devices such as mobile phones and laptops. The sensors will monitor passengers and transmit the
April 12, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
In an effort to reduce congestion and improve passenger flow at railway stations in the Netherlands, Danish software company 3778 Blip Systems and Dutch railway consultants NPC have teamed up to monitor passenger movements using Bluetooth and wi-fi tracking.

In an eight-week study at Groningen railway station, Blip Systems has installed 22 of its BlipTrack sensors which anonymously detect wi-fi and Bluetooth-enabled devices such as mobile phones and laptops.  The sensors will monitor passengers and transmit the encrypted data to a cloud server which calculates speed and travel time.  Data on passenger movements, queues and congestion will enable station operators to optimise design, improve customer experience and reduce congestion.

“We are excited to work with knowledgeable partners like NPC, and are confident that they will be able to add value to the data gathered by BlipTrack.  We hope that train stations will be yet another area where data gathered by BlipTrack and analysed by experts, can help solve passenger flow related problems and generate a higher level of comfort as well as more efficient use of resources. We see train stations as a very interesting market with great potential”, says Blip Systems CEO Peter Knudsen.

“The cooperation in developing a measuring solution specific for train stations together with BLIP systems and the Netherlands Railways (NS) has proved to be an excellent approach so far.  Although we are still in progress, the first results look extremely promising,” says program manager for Smart Stations Eelco Thiellier.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Vaisala's RoadAI can optimise maintenance
    August 20, 2019
    Alerts for natural disasters are ones that most of us would rather do without, writes Adam Hill. But the ITS industry still needs help to deal with more common meteorological issues Google Maps has added SOS alerts to its service. For those of us more used to using the phone app to navigate from a metro station to an unfamiliar restaurant, this may seem extreme. But this is not what Google has in mind. Its SOS messages are for “hurricane forecast cones, earthquake shake-maps and flood forecasts”. That
  • Include ITS in policy decisions from the start, not as an afterthought
    February 1, 2012
    DG TREN's Fotis Karamitsos, on why the European Commission's new ITS Action Plan is looking to the past for future direction. The European Commission's (EC's) new Action Plan for the Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in Europe, which was announced as 2008 drew to a close, intends that transport and travel become 'cleaner; more efficient, including energy efficient; and safer and more secure'. At first sight, that wording might be interpreted as marking a significant policy shift within Europe, wit
  • Study highlights weather effects on traffic
    July 17, 2012
    Extreme weather conditions cost the EU’s transport system at least €15 billion (US$18.44 billion) per year according to a a study carried out by the Finnish VTT Technical Research Centre. The study reveals that the greatest costs incurred are from road accidents, with the associated material and psychological effects. Costs arising from accidents are expected to decrease in volume, although time-related costs attributable to delays are projected to increase. In part, this last effect is due to climate chang
  • New model generation with PTV’s Model2Go
    August 8, 2022
    PTV Group has launched a product which automates much of the painstaking business of building transport models. Adam Hill talks to the company’s Udo Heidl and Ben Stabler to find out more