NS expects record 36.7 million passengers next month

NS expects a record number of 36.7 million passengers in September, 1.7 million more than the same month last year. The rail company is taking various measures to cope with the increasing crowds.

"September is always the busiest month of the year on the track", a NS spokesperson said to NU.nl. Commuters go back to work and students and pupils start the academic year. This year is expected to be even busier than last year because "in general, more people are on the road with continued economic growth" and due to increasing traffic on the roads, more people are taking the train, the spokesperson said.

To cope with the increasing number of travelers, NS will run longer trains on the routes Den Haag-Leiden, Rotterdam-Amsterdam, and Den-Haag Eindhoven. Other routes are already running the maximum length trains, because platforms on those routes are too short to accommodate longer trains. NS therefore asked ProrRail to extend the platforms on nine routes, according to the newspaper. The rail company will also run more trains in its new timetable for 2020, which takes effect in December.

Travelers will experience the most "rush hour nuisance" on the routes Haarlem-Amsterdam Sloterdijk, Utrecht Centraal-Amsterdam Bijlmer, Den Haag Centraal-Leiden Centraal, Ede-Wageningen-Utrecht Centraal, and Amersfoort-Utrecht Centraal.

Earlier this month NS announced that the number of passenger kilometers on the railways increased by 4.6 percent over the past six months, much more than the maximum 1.9 percent that was expected. NS and ProRail worry that the track will be completely full by 2027, three years earlier than the previous estimation.