Dutch trains to hand out bags to pee in
The new current Sprinters, trains for short distances, don’t have any toilets, and that’s a problem for many people. Knowing that these trains jam up in the winter (half of them froze up last year during a storm), going to the bathroom is a real issue.
So what have the Dutch railways come up with? Weeing bags, or ‘plaszakken’ (‘pee bags’), which is a trending topic in the Dutch Twittersphere, if not, it’s just plain trendy. The pee bags are the kind you would buy at an outdoors equipment shop. Oh, and you have to ask the train conductor for one, so you have to find him or her first.
The idea is to take a pee bag and wee in the empty train conductor’s office. They could put a bathroom in there, but no.
Train passenger organisation Rover calls the pee bag “better than nothing” and “an emergency solution.” I say it’s crisis time, and I hope nobody ever needs to do a Number 2 in the train.
UPDATE: When any new Sprinters will be in use, they will have to have toilets. Stay tuned.
(Link: nos.nl)
There are no conductor’s offices on a sprinter, the conductors use the rear driver’s cabin.
That’s the one people can pee in.
For the #2 there is a same sort of bag developed but they are not available in the train. So you’re in real trouble then. I wonder how the people of NS do it? Probably they plan it when they are in a train station. Maybe an idea for passengers also.
From what I understand, there each train has two conductor’s offices: one on each end. So, what is a bathroom for one direction is an office for the next. This is one drunken prankster short of trouble.