Better navigation on longer train routes

The Dutch Railway, NS, runs a few long train routes in the Netherlands and at times these routes may seem a bit “illogical”. An example of this in the July 2024 edition of the NS Panel news brief is the route from Dordrecht to Venlo through Schiphol. This train starts in the south, travels north to Schiphol and heads south again to Venlo. Even with all the major stops listed on the platform departure screen, this route may still confuse some passengers, especially if other quicker train connections exist between the two cities exist.

To make this simpler in the last few weeks the departure screens were updated to highlight the next big station in the current direction of travel. In the example shared by NS, at Dordrecht, the train to Venlo would read, “Venlo (via Schiphol Airport)”. In their survey, 94% of participants knew what it meant immediately with a majority preferring this over a sign without the via station indicator.

Other examples of this I’ve seen from the picture of the departure screen taken at Amsterdam Centraal are:

• Amersfoort Vathorst to Hoofddorp through Schiphol Airport
• Amsterdam Centraal to Hoorn through Haarlem
• Amsterdam Centraal to Leeuwarden through Amersfoort Centraal

At a platform departure screen, the last stop is mentioned along with the next meaningful station through the “via” feature. This highlighted station changes depending on how far into the route the train is. For example, the platform departure sign for the Amersfoort Vathorst to Hoofddorp train at Weesp reads “Hoofddorp (via Amsterdam Centraal)”, and at Amsterdam Centraal this changes to “Hoofddorp (via Schiphol Airport)”.

I could think of a few instances where this would have been useful when helping confused passengers in the past. The NS new brief also mentions rolling this out to the app and other media in 2025. I’m looking forward to it.

Lastly, as a bonus, they also appear on the little departure screens used in the passenger tunnel at Amsterdam Centraal.