At the Dutch Railways they are pretending that there is harsh winter weather these weeks. No, there are no frozen bills. The snow is not knee high on the track. Nevertheless, the NS runs according to a stripped-down timetable, as it applies if the Netherlands is struggling with heavy snowfall or severe frost.
The reason? Due to the corona measures, the transport company is short of people to be able to carry out the full timetable. Drivers and conductors call in sick because they feel the flu or test positive. Or because they have to quarantine because a family member is infected.
‘On a typical day, before the pandemic broke out, we had an average of between five and ten train drivers and as many conductors who were absent due to illness or other reasons,’ says Jordy Pendjol. He is a national monitor for personnel at the NS. In that capacity, he has to help fill the gaps in the timetables from Utrecht if the regions – NS has fourteen – can no longer do this themselves. Then employees from one region step in to help elsewhere.
It is still doable to draw up a roster up to twenty dropouts. ‘But now I see a day in advance that on average about thirty drivers and thirty conductors are not available’, explains Pendjol. ‘And that number can easily double on the day itself, because colleagues call in sick or go into quarantine in the morning. There is normally some stretch in the grid. We have some spare. But with so many dropouts, that no longer works.’
text bomb
An urgent call via a ‘text message bomb’ – a message sent to all drivers or all conductors – will then no longer offer any solace. The NS employs about 3,500 train drivers and just under 3,000 HCs (chief conductors), who carry out about 6,000 journeys every day.
The RIVM expects the infections to rise further in the coming period. Last week, NS announced that it would temporarily adjust the timetable from 7 February to cope with a higher dropout rate. The carrier is gradually scrapping more and more journeys, until only 85 percent of the timetable is left on February 21. Fewer trains, but a predictable timetable.
The Rover traveler’s association finds the intervention premature and far too rigorous. “The fact that fewer trains sometimes run due to illness and quarantine is force majeure, but with the blunt ax in the train range is a completely different story,” says director Freek Bos in the trade journal. RailPro. ‘Certainly now that society has to deal with relaxation again and travelers are on the road again.’
Since 20 December, the railways have already made fewer trips in the evening, at night and during rush hour. If the timetable is further ‘scaled down’, there will soon be only four on routes where there are currently six trains per hour and only two on routes where there are four hours per hour.
‘Actually what we are going to do is comparable to carrying out the LUD’, says Pendjol. The abbreviation stands for Landelijke Uitdunde Dienstregeling, a timetable that is taken off the shelf when the switches freeze.
That happens often. In 2013 and 2015 there was ‘LUD’ in the summer because extreme heat was predicted. Between March and June of 2020, the railway timetable was overhauled due to corona. Not so much because of a lack of staff as because of passengers going to work from home. There was no point in driving with almost empty trains.
Loaded with passengers
It is not possible to simply cancel trains from the timetable, even under normal circumstances. Pendjol: ‘You have to check whether the next train will not be overcrowded with passengers. A busy rush hour train can seat up to 1,200 passengers. Trains are also in a certain orbit. The train you cancel was expected somewhere else.’
‘You also want to keep calling at every station, even the smaller ones. Otherwise your passengers will be out in the cold.’ A solution for a winter timetable is to use fewer, but longer trains. ‘But you need extra conductors for longer trains. And they just don’t exist right now.’
In the Operational Control Center Rail (OCCR) in Utrecht, the national control center for rail, everyone is working under high voltage these weeks. Visitors are not welcome, not even the media, even though they undergo ten PCR tests. ‘We want to prevent infections at all costs.’ A test street has been set up at the OCCR, so that the staff can be tested at the start of the shift. Although: not last week. Pendjol: ‘Then one of the employees who takes the tests was sick himself.’
Corona forces ProRail to take emergency action
Prorail is also hindered by the rising infection figures and the call to go into quarantine if housemates have been felled by the corona virus. This leads to major problems in traffic control in particular, as occupation has been minimal at some regional posts for years. Last year trains were stopped due to a lack of staff. In consultation with the Outbreak Management Team, agreements have now been made so that employees with infected family members can still go to work.