NS expects to meet punctuality requirements by 0.1%, HSL remains an issue

The NS is expecting to just about meet the government’s punctuality demands this year. The national railway company is expecting 89 percent of their trains to have reached their destination on time this year, the company reported in their end-of-the-year analysis. The agreement with the government is that 88.9 percent of trains must arrive on time. A train is considered on time if it has less than five minutes delay.

The railway company had earlier warned of a “tough autumn,” but they now say that it was not as challenging as expected. The company did not struggle with the autumn weather and had taken measures in a similar way as the railway manager ProRail did.

Long-term speed restrictions are being incorporated into the timetable, and "smart maintenance and repair" is being carried out on trains, allowing sufficient trains to run this year. NS also claims to be able to operate a "robust train service" around work activities.

However, the high-speed lines (HSL) remain a problem for the company. Only 68.4 percent of the trains arrived on time on these lines, while the agreement with the government is that 82.1 percent of the trains were supposed to be on time. This is a worse result than last year when 73.6 percent were on time.

The problems on the HSL are being caused by speed limitations. Trains had to go at a slower speed than usual throughout the year because of construction mistakes in railway viaducts.

Trains were allowed to go at 120 kilometers per hour again since the beginning of December, but this is still less than the target speed, which is 200 kilometers per hour. NS is expecting the issues on the HSL to continue next year.

According to NS CEO Wouter Koolmees, employees of ProRail and NS “worked their socks off” in order to improve performance on the track. “With success. Although certainly not everything went well, we brought enough passengers to their destination on time with a good chance of being able to sit during the journey. That is worth a compliment to every rail colleague who worked hard on this."