About the author:
Maarten Lemmens is a student and avid train traveler
At the beginning of this month, the NS announced that it will cut the timetable even further, despite the trains are often overcrowded. Last week, the sad news was added that people with disabilities sometimes have to avoid train journeys due to the crowds.
It is unlikely that this situation will improve in the short term. In press releases, the NS suggests apologetic (that is) that it cannot change the crowds. Travelers who bark are always presented with the insurmountable nature of the problem: the staff shortage means that a progressive curtailment of the timetable – and therefore an ever-increasing crowds – is inevitable, the reasoning goes. In the meantime, even employees with office functions are deployed as conductors. The company seems to want to convey that it is doing everything it can to avert the travel crisis.
Now that the NS has even decided to take such ad hoc measures, it is difficult to understand why the company is still sticking to its first-class seats – unlike competitor Arriva in Groningen and Friesland. Perhaps the obstinacy is related to the enormous amounts for first-class season tickets that are paid out to the NS on a monthly basis.
There is of course nothing wrong with the idea that whoever pays more gets more (in this case, travel comfort); after all, this is the case in several facets of society. However, trains are an excellent part of public transport, they are modes of transport that should be accessible to everyone, or at least to as many passengers as possible. While first-class seats used to go together relatively smoothly with second-class seats – when everyone could often still be transported seated – they have become unreasonable in the context of today’s crowds.
Of course, converting from first-class to second-class compartments isn’t a magic bullet that turns crammed trains into circling temples. But something is better than nothing. It would be a plaster on the wound and take away a lot of unreasonableness. Only when the NS saws away the chair legs from under its first-class seats, it can rightly say that it has done everything it can to avert the travel crisis.