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Nederlandse Spoorwegen

Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS; Dutch: [ˈneːdərlɑntsə ˈspoːrˌʋeːɣə(n)] ; English: "Dutch Railways") is the principal passenger railway operator in the Netherlands. It is a Dutch state-owned company founded in 1938. The Dutch rail network is the busiest in the European Union, and the third busiest in the world after Switzerland and Japan.[4]

Company type

State-owned naamloze vennootschap

Rail transport

1938

Utrecht
,
Netherlands

Wouter Koolmees (CEO)[1]

Rail transport, rail construction, services

  • Increase 38,600 (2020)
  • 40,978 (2020)

State of the Netherlands

Abellio
Nedkoleje
NSRegio (99%)
WestfalenBahn

www.ns.nl

Netherlands

1938–present

Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij (HSM)
Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen (SS)

1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge

The rail infrastructure is maintained by network manager ProRail, which was split off from NS in 2003. Freight operator NS Cargo merged with DB Cargo in 2000. NS runs 4,800 scheduled domestic trains a day, serving 1.1 million passengers.[5] The NS also provides international rail services from the Netherlands to other European destinations and carries out concessions on some foreign rail markets through its subsidiary Abellio.

Technical problems with the high-speed trains, which started their services on 29 July 2013, and ended on 17 January 2014, led to the resignation of CEO Bert Meerstadt in June 2016[9] and a parliamentary investigation in 2016. The High Speed Alliance (HSA), an NS (80%) / KLM (20%) joint venture almost went bankrupt due to the late introduction of the trains in combination with a too high price for the concession which the company paid to the Dutch government. HSA was liquidated in 2017.

V250

In 2013, it was revealed that NS had been using a subsidiary in Ireland, NS Financial Services Company (NSFSC), to reduce its tax liability in the Netherlands. The procedure was determined to be lawful, but it was unfavorable for the Dutch taxpayers for a state-owned company to avoid national taxes. From 1998 the NS used the favourable tax climate in Ireland, which resulted in a profit for NS of more than €270 million but a loss to the Dutch state of €21 million in 2012 alone. The corporate tax rate in Ireland was 12.5%, in the Netherlands 25% at that time.[11] NS used its Irish subsidiary to buy new trains, among others the high-speed V250 trains from the Italian firm AnsaldoBreda. The Dutch Minister of Finance, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, wrote to the parliament that NS would stop this tax evasion. Most rolling stock was transferred to the Netherlands-based NS Lease in December 2017.[12] NSFSC was wound up in April 2019.[13]

[10]

In 2015 it became clear that a subsidiary of NS, , had shown unfair behaviour about a tendering for public transport in the province of Limburg. The company had obtained confidential information from a competitor, Veolia, through a former employee of Veolia who had been hired by Abellio subsidiary Qbuzz.[14] On 5 June 2015, it became clear that CEO Timo Huges of the NS had given incomplete and incorrect information about the tendering procedure. According to Minister Dijsselbloem, Huges had acted "sloppy, inaccurate and in violation of the law."[15] Consequently, Huges resigned from his position.[16]

Abellio

NS has been involved in various controversies.

is the subsidiary for operations outside the Netherlands. Abellio has won several franchises in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Abellio

In dealing with the general public, these distinctions are not made and the terms Nederlandse Spoorwegen and NS are used.


NS has contracts with Connexxion and BBA, now Veolia Transport for the provision of bus services to replace train services in the case of planned and unplanned cancellations.


On 23 July 2010 NS sold Strukton to the construction company Oranjewoud N.V.. This concluded a long history of planning, designing and executing track development done by the NS.[32][33]

Policy[edit]

There is a delay refund scheme entitling passengers to a partial or full refund of the ticket price if a journey is delayed by half an hour or more. The scheme does not apply on short-distance journeys (tickets less than €2.30) and cases in which the delay is the result of planned cancellations that were announced some days in advance. Refunds are, in general, half the ticket price of a one-way trip after a delay of over 30 minutes, and the full ticket price after a delay of one hour or more. That applies to nearly all kinds of tickets. The refund is not considered monetary compensation for lost time but rather as a reduction in charges where poor service has been provided. The system has been improved for holders of some rail passes. Part of the cost of the scheme is paid by ProRail, since they are responsible for part of the delays.


Tobacco smoking is prohibited both on trains and in stations. Smoking on trains has been prohibited since 2004, with smoking in stations permitted in designated smoking zones, until this too was disallowed in October 2020.[34]


Since June 2003, the sale of coffee, soft drinks, beer, sandwiches, candy, etc., has ceased aboard domestic trains. The increasing number of Servex convenience stores at railway stations and the relatively short duration of most train journeys in the Netherlands have lowered the demand for on-train services. In 2005, a much reduced in-train service of drinks and small snacks has been reintroduced on longer journeys. Now, the RailTender service primarily operates in the intercity trains on the trajectory between Utrecht and Zwolle/Eindhoven, Zwolle and Almere, 's-Hertogenbosch and Nijmegen, Apeldoorn and Amersfoort, Rotterdam and Breda/Roosendaal/Antwerp.

Technological assistance for train staff[edit]

Conductors have a smartphone with a timetable, fares information, and a separate card reader to read the OV-chipkaart. Train drivers use a tablet with an app called "TimTim" to save energy and keep up with the timetable. The train driver can also see other trains that are in front or behind his train.

14.73 billion passenger km per year (2005), which is 30% of the seat km.

In 2018, NS saw its number of passengers increase by nearly 3 percent. On average, 1.3 million people took the train on a weekday, 100.000 more than in 2016 and the over 250 NS train stations are becoming increasingly crowded.


The top 15 busiest train stations in the Netherlands by travelers (NS only) per working day in 2019:


Also see List of busiest railway stations in The Netherlands[35]

Johnston, Howard (18–31 May 1989). "A brief guide to the NS". . No. 96. EMAP National Publications. NS 150 special supplement. ISSN 0953-4563. OCLC 49953699.

Rail

(PDF). Annual Report in English. Retrieved 26 September 2018.

"NS Annual Report 2017"

Media related to Nederlandse Spoorwegen at Wikimedia Commons

English website

Nederlandse Spoorwegen