From next year, travelers in public transport will be more often affected by train cancellations due to work on the track. ProRail, which manages the track in the Netherlands, has to carry out so much maintenance work that it can no longer be done alone during the night, weekends and holidays.
Travelers in and around Leeuwarden are the first in the Netherlands to be confronted with train cancellations due to work during the week and during the day. From mid-June next year, the track around Leeuwarden station will be renovated. Freight transport to Germany, including in the port of Rotterdam, will also be affected more by maintenance.
ProRail announced this on Thursday. According to ProRail, this is the first time in the Netherlands that the rail manager plans activities during the day during working days. In two years (from 2022 to 2024), the number of planned activities has increased by 40 percent, according to the rail manager.
Groningen station renovation
“Working during the week and during the day remains an exception,” said Riet Schroven, Projects Director at ProRail, during an explanation to the press on Thursday morning. “The rule remains that we work at night and on weekends to limit the inconvenience to travelers as much as possible.”
However, maintenance is necessary, according to ProRail. On some routes, including in the port of Rotterdam, there is a lot of overdue maintenance. New construction is also necessary to keep homes accessible, to tackle traffic jams and to green transport, among other things, according to ProRail. “We now have to keep working to be able to run the trains in the future,” said Schroven.
In Leeuwarden, ProRail has so much work that only working at ‘quiet’ times is no longer appropriate. Between 1 June and 9 July 2024, this will include major maintenance on the tracks of the railway yard. From mid-June, only the intercity will run between Leeuwarden and Groningen. That line was also deleted in the weekend of 6 and 7 July. Then the result of all work is tested.
ProRail does not rule out more nuisance during the week and during the day due to major maintenance. A large-scale renovation of Groningen station is planned for 2025. In that case, it may also be necessary to work during the day on working days. That is not certain yet.
nighttime hours
Most trains will continue to run during the major renovation of Amsterdam Central Station, which will enter the next phase in December of this year. The work takes place there in parts. Approximately 70 percent of train traffic should continue to run, according to ProRail.
The increasing nuisance is not only due to the growing number of necessary maintenance work. ProRail and the contractors are also suffering from a major shortage of personnel. Rail contractor Strukton Rail is short of 100 to 200 employees, out of 1,200 employees. Other contractors for rail work can also use 10 to 15 percent more employees than their current workforce, says Strukton director Tjark de Vries.
“We have great difficulty finding new people,” says De Vries. “The work on the track is often very specialised. Technical people are in demand. Moreover, young people do not always want to work at night anymore.” Strukton proposes no longer working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for ProRail, but scrapping night hours and being available 16 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Freight rail in the Netherlands will also be affected by weekday maintenance. For example, ProRail will soon schedule work in the port of Rotterdam on every Monday morning. In addition, from November next year, 80 weeks of work will be carried out on the railway in Germany. For freight trains from the Netherlands, this means that either the Betuwe line or the Brabant route is temporarily closed. These are the two available routes for freight transport between Rotterdam and the Ruhr area.