If you know, you’ll see them everywhere. The Y’s of Rotterdam Central Station. In the station, Mirjam van Velthuizen, financial director (CFO) of ProRail, points around. To the uprights on the platforms, the pillars above the stairs. “The columns in the shape of a capital Y refer to the old platform roofs. A tribute to the station from 1957.”
At Rotterdam Central Station last week, Van Velthuizen (53) looked ahead to the annual figures that rail manager ProRail will publish on Thursday. She loves the renovated station, completed in 2014. “When I was studying in Rotterdam in the 1990s, I preferred not to go to the back of the station. And I completely avoided the area around platform 0. Drug dealing, prostitution. And now look: the station connects the city. From the square at the front you can look directly at the residential area at the back.”
That renovation had its price. Upon completion, ProRail and the municipality of Rotterdam proudly reported that the project had remained within the budget of approximately 675 million euros. ProRail renovated everything around the tracks, the municipality paid for the hall. But that budget was almost double the first estimate of 350 million euros (2008).
This applies to more stations. Of ten major stations that were (and are being) renovated over the last twenty years, not a single project remained within the first estimated budget. Arnhem Central Station, The Hague Central Station, Utrecht, Breda: all one and a half to two times more expensive than previously thought. The same applies to projects such as the Maaslijn (Nijmegen-Roermond) and ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management System, the European standard for securing and controlling trains, including digital signals instead of lights along the track), the costs of which now run into billions.
Track work always seems more expensive than planned. And that is a difficult conclusion now that the infrastructure in the Netherlands needs to be seriously tackled.
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Maintenance task
From railway tracks and stations to highways, waterways and water systems. The two infrastructure managers of the Netherlands, ProRail and Rijkswaterstaat, are faced with “the largest maintenance task in history”. Much of the infrastructure was built in the 1950s and 1960s and is now at the ‘end of life’. Maintenance must take place now, postponement has happened too often. ProRail previously reported that it needs an additional 20 billion euros for this – up to and including 2038. Rijkswaterstaat is short of 34.5 billion euros to be able to do all the maintenance.
Everything built in the post-corona period became structurally more expensive
“People quickly say: ‘How expensive the railway is!’,” says Mirjam van Velthuizen at Rotterdam Central Station. “But expensive is a relative concept. I think that 100 euros is already too much if it yields nothing. And 100 million euros is not much at all if it yields 1 billion. You have to look at what you want to achieve, and that is not just money. We are a public service. It is about quality of life, social value, sustainability, preventing transport poverty. And then politicians must decide which investment can achieve the most value.”
But why is it so expensive? “The first explanation is the high inflation in recent years,” says Van Velthuizen. “The strongest cost increases ended up right in our corner. Concrete, steel, energy, manpower – these are our raw materials. Inflation has caused 35 percent more costs on the railways since 2020. If you look at Rotterdam Central Station, delivered in 2014, it is even 45 percent.” If the Rotterdam station were to be renovated now, she means, it would cost 45 percent more than the renovation between 2006 and 2014.
Corona, the war in Ukraine, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – these are the geopolitical shocks that followed each other in rapid succession and each time affected exactly the materials on which the railway depends, says Van Velthuizen. “Everything built in the period after corona became structurally more expensive.”
More crowds
As a second reason for the high maintenance and construction costs, Van Velthuizen mentions that the Netherlands has one of the busiest rail networks in Europe. “The Netherlands has approximately seven thousand kilometers of track. An average of seventy trains run over each kilometer per day. That is twice as much as the European average. We once said: building new track is very expensive. So we are going to use the existing network more intensively. A conscious choice. But it has consequences for the physical load on the track.”
Trains have become heavier, larger, more luxurious. Double-deckers. They drive at a higher frequency. “As a result, you have to perform maintenance more often, and more intensively. And because of that high intensity, you also have stricter safety requirements, because everything is closer together. You should consider better surveillance, installing cameras, extra security.”
The bar for rail users is simply higher. And rightly so
She talks about a visit to an unguarded level crossing on the Veluwe that ProRail wanted to convert into a guarded level crossing. What seems like a simple decision turned out to be a years-long process. “You have several options: tunneling under, which is the most expensive, or installing a barrier, or closing it off. But then someone says: I walk here every day with my dog. And a hotel says: my guests use that level crossing. So there are all kinds of interests. Sometimes it takes five to ten years before you resolve such an issue. Then you are not yet building anything, but the bill is already running.”
The third reason is higher demands from users, both train passengers and carriers. “The bar is simply higher. And rightly so.” Van Velthuizen says that society expects more from the railway than thirty years ago: social safety, sustainability, health. “We now use quartz-less ballast [als fundering voor het spoor] because we consider quartz dust unhealthy. We measure punctuality at three and ten minutes – and we achieve that standard by the way. But all these measures cost money.”
Performance lags behind on one point: the number of impactful failures. ProRail will not achieve that standard this year. “We are leveling off the upward trend in disruptions. Perhaps a slight decrease. But we will probably not fall below the standard in 2026.” Are travelers’ expectations too high? She shakes her head. “We work for society. I’m not going to say that the customer has too high expectations.”
More expensive to maintain
The fourth reason is maintenance: the maintenance of a network that partly dates from the reconstruction after the Second World War. “We sometimes end up with very complex renovations. Take the concrete on the viaducts of the high-speed line. That requires intervention that no one had anticipated.”
She mentions an example that has stayed with her. Eight posts had to be placed in the port of Rotterdam to protect a level crossing. “The posts themselves together cost about 600 euros. But if we calculate the project costs – everything included, all procedures, all coordination – we arrive at almost a hundred thousand euros. We did not do that, we are that socially responsible. But the system produced that amount. That is crazy.” ProRail itself can also improve things here, she says. “And we are also taking action. By 2025 we will have reduced our own operating costs by 4 percent.”
It is the core of her frustration: the ambitions are not too high, but the processes are too slow, too cumbersome, too legally closed. And then there’s the matter of the “market” for maintenance work, she says.
In the 1990s, the Netherlands opted to outsource virtually all rail maintenance to the market, including fault repair. ProRail itself does not have any vehicles that check the overhead lines at night, nor any technicians who can repair a break on site. A system that worked very well in the market at the time, according to Van Velthuizen. “As far as maintenance is concerned, we don’t do anything ourselves. We call a contractor. We are an exception in this in Europe. The result: the knowledge about where the thin spots are in the overhead line, where something will go wrong tomorrow, is with the contractor, and not enough with us. While we are the ones who have to make the decisions about financing and planning.”
There are only three parties in the Netherlands that provide daily maintenance (including breakdown services). There are more for new construction projects. ProRail has maintenance contracts with Strukton Rail, Volker Rail and Asset Rail (Dura Vermeer and Arcadis). BAM stopped using it two years ago because it was too risky. “I understand that,” says Van Velthuizen. “The work is specialist, requires a lot of investments in expensive machines, staff who are available 24/7. And the agreement that maintenance contracts last a maximum of five years makes continuity uncertain.” The Netherlands is also a small market, she says, because elsewhere in Europe many rail managers do minor maintenance in-house.
Broken for four months
During last winter’s snowstorms, she went outside herself, wearing a coat, to look at a frozen switch near her house. “I thought: doesn’t it have a point heater? Yes, it does. But it turned out to be broken for four months.” Contract transfer between contractors, discussions about responsibilities, and in the meantime: the train is standing still. “We are bailing while leaving the hole in the boat.”
ProRail does not so much want to do maintenance work itself again, but wants to gain more control over the work. The rail manager is bringing back some things: the train security software, Loxia, for example, will be taken in-house as of 2027.
Van Velthuizen does not want travelers to demand less. She wants politicians to make stricter choices. “If you decide to invest less, that is possible. I understand that painful choices have to be made.” And more social safety, and higher punctuality on the train, and a more resilient rail network? She doesn’t think this can all be done at the same time. “Look at which investment adds the most social value and choose what you think is most important.”
