A day of public transport: crammed into the train and hoping for a bus

Two collisions, four signal failures, six defective or stranded trains and twice a person on the track. Plus work at Lage Zwaluwe and Dronten – but those were planned. Wednesday 2 November 2022 was a relatively smooth day for the Dutch Railways.

Public transport in the Netherlands is under pressure. The NS is suffering from a serious staff shortage and will cancel trains again from next week. Local providers are canceling bus lines or cutting back on timetables – a process that has been going on for years but has been given a strong extra boost due to the corona crisis. Public transport, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) concluded this week, is hardly an alternative to get to work or school.

NRC last Wednesday traveled criss-cross through the Netherlands for a day: six provinces and four providers. There were no major delays, the staff did their best. When things weren’t going well, resignation prevailed among passengers. And yet it became unmistakably clear: it beeps and creaks in public transport.

8:51 am Utrecht Central Station

“Every day” he does receive a text message from the NS: whether he can help out for a canceled service. “I won’t,” says the conductor firmly. “My free time is sacred. I work to live, not vice versa.”

Utrecht Central, the square between the station and the Hoog Catharijne shopping center: the permanent break for smoking NS staff. Since the smokehouse in the station building has been closed, you will find tufts of conductors and train drivers here all day long. Sometimes talking, sometimes peering at their phones.

Most smokers do not want to give their name: the NS does not allow them to talk to the media. But they do tell about their work, sometimes after some insistence. And then it quickly becomes about one thing: the staff shortage at the railways, which they feel daily. Shifts are getting longer, breaks between train rides shorter. The latter seems trivial, says chief conductor Evert (location Amersfoort), but it is not: “You are ‘on’ all day, so you really need those breaks to recharge.”

The most annoying thing, they think: you can hardly get a day off. Once every three weeks a ‘red weekend’ (no service), that’s still possible, but arrange a holiday within now and half a year? Forget it. “If I ask for time off for April,” says a driver in his mid-fifties from the Rijnmond region, “I can say for sure that the answer is: not possible.”

The plan to voluntarily deploy office staff on the train, which the NS launched at the beginning of this week? “Cheer up,” says the engineer. Her colleagues are just as skeptical. Being a conductor is a trade, you have to learn that. Moreover: without training of at least five months, those office staff are hardly qualified for anything, explains another conductor. “You can’t cut a ticket, you can’t hand out a ticket. So that will be: sit here, at least the train can run.”

Most conductors and drivers still enjoy their work, they say. But how long will they last like this? “Well,” says the conductor, who never works extra shifts. He shoots his butt. “Now I’m going to catch my train.”

10:46 am Zwolle

Jan Stuifzand is somewhat lost on platform 12. The slow train from 10.52 am to Groningen, provided by regional provider Blauwnet, has been cancelled. Stuifzand is on his way from Enschede to Hoogeveen to pick up the keys to his new apartment. “Fortunately, I left home well in time,” says Stuifzand, “exactly because of this kind of nonsense.” From next month he will work at a plant nursery in Hoogeveen. “Luckily I do have a car.”

Later in the day, during the evening rush hour, the other sprinter from Zwolle to Kampen will not drive for more than an hour. The reason? Staff shortage.

12:22 pm Emmeloord

‘Bus crazy’, André Boersma calls himself. The driver of the Q-liner from Joure is standing at the almost deserted bus station of Emmeloord. He smokes a cigar. He is not actually a driver, says Boersma. He worked for thirty-five years at the VDL bus factory in Heerenveen, but it closed its doors at the beginning of this year. Didn’t he want, the offer said, to be seconded to Arriva for a while as a bus driver? That’s what Boersma wanted. He thinks the work is “beautiful”.

The Noordoostpolder is one of those places where you can’t really get anywhere without a car. In Kraggenburg, fifteen kilometers southeast of Emmeloord, a bus only leaves once an hour – until half past six in the evening. Estimated travel time to Groningen: two hours and six minutes. To The Hague: two hours and forty-seven minutes. If you have to go to the nearest hospital, in Lelystad or in Zwolle, it will take you at least an hour and twenty minutes.

And it is only expected to decrease in this region. Another driver without any effort shakes up two lines that have been canceled or shortened in the past year: line 163 from Lelystad to Dronten and line 11 in Kampen. “Deeply sad,” he sighs. “That’s how you chase the commuters off the bus.”

Driver André Boersma stops on the Q-liner of Arriva again in mid-December. He goes back to the factory, which will focus on the production of bathroom units. Rode? The working conditions. “Look, in five years I will be in the service for forty years. At Arriva I then receive one gross monthly salary. Two gross monthly salaries and a silver watch at the factory.”

14:01 hrs Lelystad Center

So, that was another bus. Steward Anka Dekker, dressed in a loose-fitting fluorescent jacket, lights a cigarette.

At the northern exit of Lelystad Centrum station there are crush barriers and a movable check-in column. The NS shuttle bus to Dronten departs here every half hour. Trains do not run on this route, since the beginning of September. A high-voltage cable fell on the overhead lines and caused extensive damage. ProRail is in the process of repairing it, but due to a lack of personnel and materials, this will take at least until mid-December. The result: overcrowded trains between Amersfoort and Zwolle, the only remaining route from the Randstad to the north. For travelers who prefer to go via Flevoland, there is a shuttle bus in Lelystad every half hour. Extra travel time: half an hour.

The 2 p.m. bus has just left. A Croatian coach with a Croatian driver – this is where public transport inconvenience, staff shortages and labor migration come together. The bus was not full, a maximum of twenty passengers. But during rush hour, says steward Dekker, the queue is often so long that travelers have to take a bus later.

In general, says Dekker, people behave quite well. Sometimes the driver gets irritated reactions because, unlike the train, it is not allowed to eat or drink on the bus. “But who else is going to clean that bus? The driver himself, with a dustpan and can?”

The cigarette is gone, Dekker steps away. There will be another bus in half an hour.

6:40 PM The Hague Central Station

Crowded halls, standing in the aisle of the second class. And then this Wednesday is not too bad, say various travelers on the Intercity from The Hague to Utrecht: Tuesday and Thursday, meeting days, are even busier. The conductor stays in his cubicle. “I don’t check tickets when it’s so busy.”

The ‘civil servant train’ of 6.40 pm is notorious in The Hague. The evening rush hour is over, so the NS is driving a shorter train: three wagons instead of seven. But the influx of commuters at that time is still so great that a seat is often an illusion.

In the morning, the other way, it’s the same story, says Marie-José Linders. “I get up earlier and earlier so that I am not in a crowded train. The alarm clock is now set for six o’clock.” Linders, seated on a folding chair in the hall, lives in Utrecht and works in The Hague for a government organization. “I have been calculating whether it is cheaper to go by car. But because of the climate, I can’t justify that to myself.” Linders looks around the hall. “I’ll keep going by train.”