July 2005

During our stay in Holland (and ofcourse also when I'm not in Holland) I followed the Dutch newspapers for the latest news. The news that always catches my eye is the information about the Dutch railways NS raising their prices, very frequent even twice per year.
When I was studying I always made use of NS and when Anna was living in Holland she also travelled by train daily, so I tend to think I'm pretty much up-to-date with NS's service. Their tickets are already heavily overpriced and every time I read about a raise of price I get this feeling of annoyance in my gut. I mean... If they indeed would have some kind of service the prices would maybe be justified, but the service that NS supplies its customers with is next to non-existent. The main point of their non-existent service being trains that are structurally delayed. The second point of their non-existent service being that where the goverment tried to reduce the traffic problem in Holland by getting people take the train more, the NS increases prices and reduces the amount of trains per hour. Oh, and that other thing that bugs me SO endlessly. You have to pay 50 cents extra on a ticket if you buy it at the desk and if you want to buy a ticket from a vending machine, you need either a Dutch bank card or then a back pack full of small change, because the stupid machines don't accept paper money. ARGH!!
Reading the newspaper just now I got again annoyed when I read the message that NS is planning to put an extra fee of 10 cents on the price for tickets in the Randstad, the area around Amsterdam, where most of the travelers are commuting.
NS's justification: most travelers are commuting in that area, so we have more costs there and need to put more service on that track.
That, in my eyes, is first-class crap, because they need to put more service everywhere, and start increasing prices only when they actually have some service.
How is it, that in for example Japan, a country 20+ times as big as Holland, with a population of 10+ times as big as Holland, the trains go with a 99% accuracy?
Maybe NS should go on a course there to learn how it's supposed to be done.