The Dutch Railways are not doing well. You used to be able to fall in love on the train, read a book in peace and muse out of the window, nowadays you are regularly blown away by an egg-eating mob calling on the speaker, watching TikTok videos without earphones, yogurt eats garlic and folds out his folding bicycle in the aisle. IKEA on Boxing Day, but every day – you wouldn’t send your worst enemy into it.
Disruptions, canceled journeys due to staff shortages, trains that are too short – it hurts me to see NS like this. Because it was always one of those tough Dutch companies that I looked up to as a child.
The environment also cries for it, every day.
And so I thought: there must be another way. Because if this continues, the country will become one big dreary plain full of traffic jams and an entire generation will grow up without train romance.
That is why this week, just before the leaves-on-the-rails malaise starts again, a rescue campaign to make NS great again, in 13 steps. The company deserves it, but above all, we deserve it. Because a healthy train service makes a healthy country. Are they coming!
1First of all, implement a tough door policy for the train rush hour.
Anyone who has no business there – get out and come back after 10 hours. Think of retirees, people with folding bicycles and people with vague job titles. If that’s not enough, we can always scale up to people who don’t know how to store text messages on a Nokia, who spend a day in Den Helder or go to their life coach, yoga or the furniture boulevard. This is now very easy with facial recognition. Cameras and entrance gates are already there. So we can start with that today.
2But rather stop traveling completely during rush hour!
You can work at any hour of the day. For example, take the train at half past five in the morning, two in the afternoon or eleven in the evening. Then NS is at its best.
3I sometimes think that NS should stop with the rush hour anyway.
Everyone should do what they do best. You don’t ask a back-end developer to give a glowing speech, do you? Well then.
4And go to work on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Seriously guys. If NS has the services back on track, Tuesdays and Thursdays may once again be included in the picture. Until then, only students, pupils and people from healthcare, the police and education are allowed to travel on those days.
5And take the train in a different direction!
Really, why always the same route? You can work anywhere.
6Go to Tilburg, for example.
I was on my train there the other day and I didn’t know what I was seeing. Clean trains, empty compartments, grassy meadows, churches and rivers en route, and Tilburg is bursting with good workplaces – so no one expects that. That’s why it’s so quiet there!
7Think of your train journey as a gym – that makes an overcrowded train super attractive.
Take the Marine Corps as an example, which has been training its recruits during the train rush for years – we can do that too.
Why would you think it normal to torture yourself in a park in the pouring rain and think it strange to see the train as a uniquely spartan boot camp? I mean: pole dancing, boxing with your fellow travelers, climbing stairs, scrum with all scrum masters and standing for hours – call Arie Boomsma for more inspiration.
8Reverse the totally failed privatization of NS, nationalize the entire trade and pump in a few billion – it’s not that difficult people.
Why should we be able to save ABN Amro or KLM and not save our national eco-friendly pride? No one has been able to explain that to me yet. Billions are ready if we start taxing kerosene, too. Sounds like a good time to finally start doing that.
9And get more drivers!
Now all friendly, capable Dutchmen have become either conductors, nurses or teachers – they are now gone. Rigorous measures are therefore required. Get them out of the offices, get them out of colleges and universities, get coaches retrained, clone the conductors we already have if need be, but do something. We can’t do without them.
Otherwise, introduce the conductor’s obligation for school leavers. Being a conductor for a year and sleeping in a large barrack on Hoog Catharijne. Always on time for work, and you learn what real life is like.
10Paying conductors decently would also help a lot.
I recently heard the rumor that a random scrum master at NS gets twice as much salary as a conductor! Would it?? madness!
11I think it would be better to stop with ‘agile working’ and scrum masters, NS.
Since you started that, things have only gone downhill for the company. Chance? I do not think so.
Nobody understands your vacancies anymore! For example, I recently read one in which a ‘product specialist’ was sought who achieves goals with a “sensitive attitude, agile way of working and result-orientedness by involving the chain in setting up the proposition and checking it for feasibility”.
uh. Are you surprised that you can no longer find staff?
12And oh yes, Teslas. They are now a far too comfortable alternative to the train.
We’re going to cut those down. So hop out of the air conditioning, and also the heating, route planners, automatic windows, hair dryers, and back to the cassette deck. Furthermore, all Teslas are programmed to automatically drive to stations to pick up stranded travelers.
13 But the most important thing is we ourselves, we the travelers.
If we decide together to boost NS in the pace of the peoples, that will happen.
Someone wrote on Twitter: “I’d rather sit together in the train than in a traffic jam – that feeling of togetherness” – that’s where we have to go and every Dutchman should work hard for that. Come on people.
Make NS great again.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 1, 2022