Budget bus firm Flix looking to launch Dutch rail service
The German company Flix, known for its bright green budget buses, has plans to launch a rail service in the Netherlands with competitive and affordable train tickets, CEO André Schwämmlein told AD. No routes have been chosen yet, and Schwämmlein didn’t give a timeframe.
Flix has already ordered 65 new long-distance trains from the Spanish manufacturer Talgo. With these new vehicles, the Munich-based carrier plans to significantly expand its FlixTrain service, including into the Netherlands.
Currently, FlixTrain operates a very modest timetable from Dutch border towns like Arnhem and Venlo. Since 2014, Flix buses have been running from cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht to various other European cities.
According to Schwämmlein, the company has not chosen specific Dutch train routes yet, but they are considering the Oberhausen-Rotterdam connection via Arnhem, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, among others. He promised competitive prices. "We're generally considerably cheaper than other providers," Schwämmlein told AD.
Two years ago, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) and ProRail already granted Flix permission to run twice a day starting in 2024. But due to extensive work on the German and Dutch railways, the route assigned by ProRail proved unusable in practice. Flix trains between Anrhem and Utrecht would have to give way to NS intercity trains three times at each crossing, resulting in too poor a product, so Flix decided to postpone its expansion into the Netherlands.
Schwämmlein told AD that travelers benefit from national carriers like NS having competition. “European countries are still competing with each other. But European companies should actually be competing with each other,” he said. “If that happens, people can move around much more easily in the heart of Europe.”
