The failure at NS, which prevented any train from running after 12:00 on Sunday, was caused by the failure of “an important component” of the company’s IT system. Also, the backup system that was supposed to handle such failures didn’t work. This is apparent from an initial analysis of the train failure, writes State Secretary for Infrastructure and Water Management Vivianne Heijnen (CDA) in a letter to Parliament on Tuesday. Why the systems failed is not yet clear.
The cause of the outage “will be thoroughly investigated” by an independent agency, the state secretary says. The study also pays attention to the speed of the restoration of the timetable, communication to passengers who were stranded on Sunday and ‘the extent to which NS was able to provide for the use of replacement transport’. NS said on Sunday that it was impossible to arrange alternatives.
The State Secretary writes in the letter to parliament that the performance of NS on Sunday was “substandard”, given the impact and the extent to which the passenger’s self-reliance was called upon. She previously called the malfunction a “very bad turn by NS”. Although the IT systems were working again on Sunday evening, they were not in good enough order to be used. On Monday morning, “almost” all trains were running again, the carrier said in a statement.
Also read: Not a single NS train in the whole country. ‘You don’t mean this, you don’t mean this!’