With the ever growing global population, crowding in public transport is becoming an increasing menace. Public transport systems around the world have remained largely the same over the past several decades although the population they serve has burgeoned. This paper aims to demonstrate a low cost IoT based solution to the crowding problem by using smart seats that can detect and display the seat occupancy status in real time over an internet or mobile application. The feasibility of the project was assessed and simulated using the NETSIM simulation software. The results of the software simulation showed promise and hence a hardware prototype was built using the IEEE 802.15.4 standard on the Arduino - Raspberry Pi - nRF platform. The prototype results are positive and show a fully functional IoT system that can be implemented in buses and trains.