Dutch rail infrastructure condition worries NS chief

Dutch rail infrastructure condition is still weighing on NS, even as the operator closes the year with better performance on several measures.

This is reported by the railway transport news portal Railway Supply.

In its NS year-end forecast, the state-backed company says it ran more trains, carried more passengers than in 2024, and saw punctuality improve, while the chances of finding a seat stayed the same.

NS puts 90.6% of journeys in the “five minutes late or less” category, up from 89.4% last year. It also says more than 95% of passengers arrived within 10 minutes of the scheduled time, slightly higher than in 2024.

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NS CEO Wouter Koolmees welcomed those figures, but tied many of the year’s problems for travellers to rail disruptions and engineering works linked to the state of the network.

Performance improves, but disruptions still dominate

Koolmees said too many parts of the railway are “past its sell-by date”, a point also cited by Railtech. In his view, that helped drive an excessive number of disruptions this year and led to “some very bad days” for passengers in the autumn.

He added that good infrastructure is a prerequisite for a good train journey, and said the same track condition is forcing ProRail to carry out a record level of maintenance works—a “mammoth task” that ProRail is tackling “with all its might.”

Ridership is expected to rise by 2.9% compared with 2024, taking NS to about 95% of 2019 levels, the year before the coronavirus pandemic. The operator also pointed to the new timetable introduced last December, which added 1,600 additional trains per week. Off-peak, average seat occupancy was around 30%.

Koolmees said passengers arrived on time more often, usually had a seat, and had more train options than last year—while noting he does not often travel by train during peak hours.

Overcrowding on key routes and ICNG “Wasp” issues

Crowding is still most obvious on the The Hague–Eindhoven route and on services to and from Schiphol, where passengers often struggle to find a seat during an extended rush hour. At times, NS says, conductors have to push people into the vestibules so the doors can close.

The ICNG—nicknamed the “Wasp”—is described as even more challenging. With fewer doors, passengers gather at the entrances and then squeeze inside. NS says this can, not infrequently, cause door alignment problems that leave doors unable to close properly.

ProRail funding for maintenance in the spotlight

NS also says the number of stranded trains appears to have increased for various reasons, but it refuses to back that up with figures. Even so, the operator’s point is clear: hardly a day goes by without a stranded train affecting service.

Koolmees’s answer is a call for more support for ProRail. He wants the government to provide more funding and opportunities so the track can be maintained at the level NS performance expectations demand in the Netherlands.

Alongside housing construction, an attractive business climate and the energy transition, he said robust public transport underpinned by reliable infrastructure remains part of the solution—regardless of how a new government decides to proceed.

For travellers, that still means living with disruption from works on the network, echoed in NS travel information on planned maintenance on the tracks.

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