Dutch railway operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) will not introduce a formal ban on passengers placing bags on train seats. Instead, it is opting for a simpler house rule: seats are for passengers, and hand luggage should not unnecessarily occupy a seat.
The change is part of a broader revision of NS’s passenger rules announced on Wednesday. The railway company had previously proposed explicitly prohibiting luggage from occupying seats in its general terms and conditions. After advice from the Dutch public transport passenger council LOCOV, which includes passenger organisation Rover, NS has dropped the proposed ban.
The new house rule states that “seats are for passengers” and that hand luggage should not unnecessarily occupy a seat. Existing conditions also make clear that luggage must be removed from a seat if another passenger asks to sit there.
NS says the issue is not so much about banning bags as about making expectations clear to passengers. The company wants travellers to give each other space and behave considerately on crowded trains.
The approach is therefore closer to a nudge than a prohibition: passengers are not being threatened with a specific penalty for putting a bag on an empty seat, but are being reminded that the seat is ultimately intended for a person.
The problem with expecting people to “just be sensible”
That seemingly modest distinction raises a wider question about travelling by public transport: how realistic is it nowadays to expect passengers simply to understand and follow the spirit of a rule?
Belgian social philosopher François Levrau, of the University of Antwerp, recently used another train rule to explore precisely this problem.
In an opinion piece published in De Standaard, Levrau described travelling in the silence zone of an Ostend to Antwerp train. Despite the clearly marked nature of the carriage, children were shouting and climbing over seats, adults were talking at normal volume and other passengers were listening to music. Rather than relying on the silence zone to be silent, Levrau eventually had to put on his own earphones to escape the noise.
His argument goes beyond railway etiquette. Levrau describes the silence carriage as a small-scale sociological laboratory in which people increasingly treat rules as optional recommendations rather than collective agreements.
A sign saying that a carriage is intended to be quiet, in this interpretation, no longer necessarily means “you must be quiet”. It becomes something closer to “it would be nice if you were quiet”.
Levrau calls the resulting individual the ‘hoop being‘ (‘hoepelwezen‘): someone who metaphorically draws a hoop around themselves and views the world primarily through their own needs, feelings and preferences. The relevant question shifts from “What is expected of me here?” to “Why shouldn’t I do this?”
That is particularly relevant to the luggage debate.
A passenger who puts a bag on an empty seat may not regard themselves as deliberately inconsiderate. From their perspective, the seat is empty, the bag is conveniently placed there and nobody has yet asked for it. But the underlying social rule, that seats are principally for people, can easily disappear behind the immediate convenience of the individual passenger.
When the exception becomes the rule
Levrau also distinguishes between what sociologists call injunctive norms, what people believe should happen, and descriptive norms, what people actually see others doing.
Once passengers enter a silence zone where several people are already talking, the behaviour of those passengers can become more influential than the signs on the walls. If everyone else is talking, another passenger may conclude that the silence rule is not really being enforced.
The same principle applies to bags on seats.
One bag on an otherwise empty train may seem harmless. But when a train becomes busy and passengers begin occupying seats with bags, the behaviour can quickly become self-reinforcing. A passenger who sees five bags occupying five seats may feel less compelled to be the person who removes theirs.
And there is another problem: social correction itself has become more difficult. Levrau argues that a person who politely points out another passenger’s behaviour risks being perceived as intrusive or meddlesome.
In other words, the railway operator can put up the sign, but someone still has to decide that the sign actually means something.
NS chooses persuasion over prohibition
NS’s decision therefore reflects a broader tension in public transport. Operators can write increasingly detailed rules covering every possible form of inconsiderate behaviour, or they can rely on passengers to understand relatively simple principles of shared space.
NS has chosen the latter approach for bags.
The company already uses a similar philosophy elsewhere. Its trains have designated quiet zones, and NS’s existing passenger information asks travellers to store luggage in the luggage racks or under their seats so that seats and aisles remain available to other passengers.
Belgian railway operator NMBS / SNCB has taken a comparable approach to quiet travel. Since 2024, it has been rolling out silence zones on its main InterCity routes, marked with stickers and pictograms. Passengers using these zones are asked not to talk or make phone calls loudly and to keep their phones and headphones at a reasonable volume.
The philosophy is essentially the same: make the desired behaviour visible and ask passengers to cooperate, rather than attempting to regulate every interaction through a rigid prohibition.
But can courtesy be regulated?
That may be the real challenge facing railways.
Modern trains are increasingly full, with passengers competing for limited seats and personal space. At the same time, operators are trying to make trains pleasant for different kinds of travellers: those who want to talk, those who want to work, those who want silence and those travelling with children or luggage.
Rules can establish the boundaries. They cannot, however, replace basic consideration for other people.
Levrau’s argument is that this is becoming increasingly difficult because the language of individual freedom, autonomy and self-expression has become much stronger, while the corresponding language of responsibility, restraint and consideration has weakened.
That does not necessarily mean that people are less polite than previous generations. Rather, it suggests that the social expectation to restrain one’s own behaviour for the benefit of strangers has become less automatic.
For NS, that makes the luggage decision something of a test. The company is effectively saying: we don’t need to ban bags on seats; surely passengers can understand that a seat is for a passenger.
The obvious counter-question is whether passengers still reliably understand, and respect, the spirit of such rules.
On a crowded train, the difference between a rule and a suggestion can ultimately come down to something as simple as whether the person with the bag notices the passenger standing beside them.
And whether they decide that the empty seat belongs to their luggage, or to the person who needs it.
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