NS is dealing with multiple train traffic disruptions on Monday morning. The rail company currently has seven different train warnings listed on its site. Many cancelations, delays and platform switches are expected.
No train traffic is currently possible to and from Zaandam. According to NS, this is due to "multiple disruptions". The rail company hopes to get trains restarted in this area by 10:00 a.m.
The access gates on Amsterdam Central Station are locked from today. From now on travelers will have to check in with their public transit card to gain access to the station and platforms, NOS reports.
People only visiting the station to say goodbye to someone, or visit one of the stores in the station, can check in and out for free within one hour.
The intention is to also lock the gates at Amsterdam Sloterdijk station before the end of the year. According to NOS, then 75 of the over 400 train stations in the Netherlands will have locked gates.
ProRail will rebuild and revamp large parts of Amsterdam Central Station, Amsterdam Amstel Station and Schiphol Station in the coming years, a spokesperson for ProRail confirmed to NU.nl after reports in the Telegraaf. This is necessary to accommodate the new 10-minute train schedule ProRail and NS plan to implement.
The entrance gates at Utrecht Central Stations will be locked from Monday morning. From now on, people can only access the platforms at the station by checking in with their public transit card. Utrecht Central Station is the 71st station in the Netherlands on which this measure is implemented, NOS reports.
The VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie are now really very almost done with their government agreement, ChristenUnie leader Gert-Jan Segers said to NOS on Friday afternoon. But he thinks the four parties will have to meet again on Monday.
There will be no meetings over the weekend. The ChristenUnie respects the Sunday rest. "And on Saturday I have other plans", Segers said to the broadcaster.
On December 29th, an experiment will start with running night subways in Rotterdam and its surrounding areas. For one year, transit company RET will run subways on all lines for an hour longer on Fridays and Saturdays. This means that the last subway will leave Rotterdam at 1:30 a.m., AD reports.
The VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie plan to invest over 2 billion euros into asphalt, public transit and waterways in the coming years, sources confirmed to RTL Nieuws after reports in the Telegraaf.
A large part of that money is destined to address places where traffic jams often arise, for example on the A1, A12 and A12 highways. The new government is also investing 100 million euros into bicycle paths.
NS intends to close the entrance gates at all major train stations by the end of the year. This started with a three day test at Amsterdam Central Station, which started on Thursday and ends at Saturday. If this test goes well, the gates will be locked permanently at Amsterdam CS from December, meaning that travelers can only enter the station by checking in with their public transit card, NOS reports.
Avid fans of the Dutch Royals braved the early morning cold and mist to make sure they have a good spot along the route the Dutch King and Queen will take from Noordeinde Palace to the Ridderzaal in The Hague for Budget Day. The first spectators arrived at the palace at 6:30 a.m on Tuesday, according to ANP.
The GroenLinks faction in Amsterdam wants to ban all cars from the city center, according to a draft election program that will be presented to the Amsterdam city council on Thursday, AT5 reports. "We'll make the Mauritskade, Stadhouderskade, and Nassaukade a green cycling- and walking boulevard", the program reads, according to the broadcaster.
On Wednesday morning NS and ProRail started an experiment on running trains on the busy route between Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Bosch and Eindhoven every 10 minutes. The experiment went well during the first morning rush hour, according to the rail organizations, AD reports.
According to NS, the waiting times for travelers were a bit shorter this morning. "The crowds were similar to a normal working day", NS said. A spokesperson added: "We had no cancelations or significant delays. We'll keep a close eye on it for the rest of the day."
Dutch rail company NS is preparing for its busiest month in the year. The rail company expects to transport over 35 million passengers in September, as the summer holidays end and people get back to school and work. Overcrowded trains, like traffic jams on the highways, are to be expected, CEO Roger van Boxtel said to newspaper AD.
NS's group return tickets were intended to encourage families and football teams to take the train to their destination instead of a car, but instead the tickets became easy fraud for bargain hunters and brokers, AD reports. NS estimates that between 15 thousand and 20 thousand travelers use these group tickets fraudulently each month, according to the newspaper.
Public transit card company Translink passed on the travel data of dozens of students to government education service DUO so far this year, the Volkskrant reported on Tuesday. The data is used to check that the students are not claiming higher allowances than their due by saying they no longer live with their parents while they still do. Travelers' organization Maatschappij voor Beter OV feels that DUO is violating privacy rules, according to the newspaper.
No trains are running between Rotterdam Central Station and Den Haag Central Station this week, due to maintenance work on the rails. The work started on Monday and is expected to take until Sunday, NS said on its website.
NS advises travelers to detour, for example via Gouda, or use the Randstad Rail. One commuter train will travel between Den Haag Central Station and Den Haag HS. Buses are deployed on some routes.
The rail company advises travelers to take extra travel time of between 15 minutes and 30 minutes into account.
ProRail established a special team to check all fire alarms that go off in the Schiphol tunnel. The rail operator hopes that this team will help stop fire alarms in the tunnel leading to chaos and hours-long delays on the track in the Randstad area, ANP reports.
Fire detectors in the tunnel often sound alarm over small and relatively harmless incidents, bringing train traffic to a stand still while the alarm is investigated. According to ProRail, the new team will check out what is going on within 10 minutes of an alarm and solve the problems themselves as far as possible.
A serious shortage of bus drivers is looming just over the horizon, NOS reports after speaking to the Dutch public transit companies. Some companies even doubt whether they will be able to keep all their bus lines running in the near future.
The Netherlands' experiment with letting customers pay for public transit with their smartphones, instead of the public transit card, did not have a great start. Since it launched in May only 4,702 people used the 'OV chip mobiel' app, and used it an average of five or less times, AD reports.
A major signal interruption in the Randstad means that no train traffic is possible to and from The Hague Central Station. Passengers have been stuck on a train near the station for over an hour, according to AD.
The disruption is also causing delays and problems in the rest of the Randstad region, according to NS. Train traffic to and from Leiden Central Station is also at a standstill. And no Intercity-direct trains are traveling on the HSL route between Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
Dutch rail company NS is working on an expansion for its Travel Planner-app that will tell train passengers where to find empty seats in crowded trains, a spokesperson for NS said to AD. The company hopes that this function will be available from next year.
This idea was thought up by two NS analysts for an internal competition. They proposed using existing sensors, currently used to measure the weight of freight trains, for measuring the weight of passenger trains.
A toddler was beaten in a seemingly random attack on a bus in Eindhoven two weeks ago, the police write on Facebook. A witness reported the incident. The police are examining footage of the incident and are looking for more witnesses.
According to the police, the incident happened on June 17th at around 7:45 p.m. on a line 4 bus traveling from the Eindhoven station to Heesterakker.
Train travelers can expect significant delays during the summer holidays as ProRail is using this time to do extra maintenance on the rails. Some 7 thousand ProRail employees and contractors will carry out maintenance in 40 places in the coming period. "Travelers will have a lot of inconvenience, but unfortunately that can't be helped", ProRail CEO Pier Eringa said, according to RTL Nieuws.
No trains will be stopping at Brussels Central Station today following a small explosion there on Tuesday night, NS International said on its website. The explosion happened around 8:30 p.m. The Belgian authorities had control of the situation very quickly and no one bystanders were injured. The suspected perpetrator was gunned down by soldiers almost immediately after the explosion, ANP reports.
Train travelers can expect rail traffic delays on Monday morning due to a NS worker strike organized by union FNV at Den Haag Centraal and Zwolle stations. The strike started at 5:00 a.m. and will go on until 9:00 a.m.
