Update Monday April 4, 7:30 AM: Train services have been restored, hallelujah!
Earlier:
Such a nice sunny Sunday, what could go wrong? Well, obviously the trains, because of a technical malfunction at the NS, no trains will run until at least 8 PM anywhere in the Netherlands.
Because of the same malfunction, the travel planner also shows a lot of incorrect travel advice. It was also not possible to show current travel information at stations for hours — but that information has since been restored, the NS said.
The latest tweet from the NS reports that it’s until 5 PM. But at 3:30 PM the news came in that trains were cancelled until at least 8 PM:
Trains might not run this entire Sunday
It is unclear how long the outage will last, and the NS advises not to travel. If you are already underway you have to find other transport and plan the trip via the 9292 app and all NS trains with a scheduled departure time before 8 PM will not run, as is reported on their website.
To make matters worse, no buses are used because there are not enough to cover all the passengers in all of the Netherlands, said a spokesperson to the NOS.
Not everything has broken down though, as the regional trains (a.k.a not the Randstad) are apparently running according to their normal timetable.
Travellers stranded all across the country
Passengers have become trapped at stations across the Netherlands. There are tons of international travellers stranded at Amsterdam Central Station who now have no idea what to do. Among them are people who have to fly from Schiphol in a couple of hours.
Stuck on a station? Up for giving a fellow traveller a ride? Just annoyed with the NS? Comments below!
Image: Abuzer van Leeuwen/Supplied
I hope this is not a late April Fools joke.
the predatory behavior of taxi drivers at central station has to be stopped. due to trains being out taxi drivers where quoting fares 120 euros and above to go to schipol and tbey refused to use the meter which should be illegal.