Gates closed at Rotterdam central station, other NS stops

Conductors, drivers and other railway workers closed the gates at Rotterdam Central Station on Friday morning with a symbolic push of a button, NS announced on its website. The closure of the gates took effect 6 months early to help improve the safety of public transport. Rotterdam is the first large station in the Netherlands to activate the access gates. The more than 100 thousand people that travel through the station everyday will from now on only be able to access the station with a valid ticket. 82 of the more than 400 stations in the Netherlands will soon have access gates. This means that about 90 percent of travelers will eventually run into an access gate at the start or end of their journey. Travelers will have to open the gates by checking in and out with their public transport smart card. People traveling with an e-ticket or international ticket, can open the gates with the square barcode on the ticket. This is one of the measures implemented by NS and the government to help reduce aggression and the number of people traveling without a ticket on trains and in stations.