No more using train delays as an excuse for being late: Dutch trains are almost always on time

If you’re someone who loves to complain about how tardy the Dutch railways are, then you may not be right on this one. According to new figures reported by RTL Nieuws, 92.6% of all trains have a maximum delay of five minutes. That’s not so bad, is it? 

With a 14% increase in the number of travellers in the last five years, the NS  must be doing something right. These new figures show us that they have been performing consistently high since last year in 2018. Public transport in the Netherlands is not that bad!

More people, more problems?

You would think that if a business gets more customers, it would be a good thing for them. But with NS, they might have reached their ceiling. The chance of getting a seat fell from 95.1% to 94.8% and they cannot add more or longer trains on a lot of the busy routes.

Travelers’ associations believe that the government should be investing more in the railways if they truly want more people to stop using their cars for daily commutes. However, NS CEO Roger van Boxtel is happy and said, “NS has improved performance considerably in recent years. That is first and foremost good news for our travelers, but also worth a compliment to everyone at NS.”

More high-speed trains?

Only 83.4% of high-speed trains arrive on time. But NS has big plans to increase this number. New trains will be entering the tracks in 2021. These trains are specialized to run on the tracks and take in the high overhead voltage on the high-speed tracks. So perhaps this would even out the travellers on some of the routes.

Do you travel by train every day? Do you believe these numbers? Let us know in the comments below!

Feature Image: Pixabay/ Skitterphoto

Kavana Desai
Kavana Desaihttps://medium.com/@kavanadesai
Coping with the aftermath of her 3-year stint in the Netherlands, Kavana is a writer, content creator and editor for DutchReview. Hailing from India, she frequently blogs about the Netherlands, being Indian in the Netherlands, and everything in between. She envisions herself to one day be the youngest person to win that Nobel Prize for Literature (she is also not very humble but welcomes only constructive criticism). In the meantime, she fills her days with writing for DutchReview, writing her master's thesis on art theft, and writing fiction that will hopefully see the light of day soon.

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