Traveler organization Rover received considerably more complaints from NS travelers in October than in September. According to the travel organization, this has never happened before. Despite the autumn break this month, travelers complained about fewer trains, which were often even shorter.
In total, Rover received 2,650 complaints in October. In September, normally the busiest month on the railways, that number was 1749. Rover Freek Bos director euphemistically calls this ‘pretty special’, precisely because of the autumn holidays. “You expect people to report less because they don’t go to school, study or work.”
Most problems on the Zwolle-Utrecht route
The route where travelers encountered the most problems was between Zwolle and Utrecht. About a quarter of the complaints related to this process. According to Bos, this is because NS has started running more trains, but shorter ones. “In addition, 10 percent of these complaints came in over the weekend. This is striking, because NS often points to peak times as the biggest cause of passenger complaints.”
Another reason for the traffic on this route is the fact that this is the only connection with the Randstad. Due to an incident with a high-voltage cable, no train traffic is possible between Dronten and Lelystad. This makes the route between Zwolle and Lelystad unusable until mid-December.
One conductor on long train’
Train passengers also experience many problems on the route between Deventer and Amsterdam South. “They are related to work. NS has communicated this, and started to run with fewer trains. But those trains were often very short. In that regard, NS should have advised travelers better, for example about traveling outside rush hours,” Bos thinks.
He therefore wants NS to reconsider the decision to use shorter trains. “NS has to pull out all the stops to solve the problems. Own rules about how long a train can be with a single conductor must be abandoned for this. Of course there are unforeseen circumstances, such as the incident at Dronten or work elsewhere. But these complaints indicate that the problems at NS are greater.”