Travelers chose the main station in Groningen as the most beautiful train station in the Netherlands, in a poll ran by NS on social media. Amsterdam Central Station came in 4th place.
Of the over 10 thousand people who voted, over 33 percent voted for Groningen. The historic station in Valkenburg came in second place with 16 percent of the votes, followed by Rotterdam Central Station with 14 percent, Amsterdam Central Station with 11 percent, and Utrecht Central Station with 9 percent.
Dutch rail company NS is looking into building thousands of homes above the railways around Utrecht Central Station, Amsterdam Sloterdijk, and The Hague Central Station. NS wants to use the money it expects to earn with this to modernize the train stations, RTL Nieuws reports.
More and more Dutch people are taking the train. NS saw its number of passengers increase by nearly 3 percent last year. On average, 1.3 million people took the train each working day last year, 100 thousand more than in 2016, AD reports.
Remarkably, the number of weekend travelers saw a stronger increase than weekday travelers. On Saturdays and Sundays, 4.2 percent more people took the train in 2018 than in 2017. During the weekdays, passenger numbers increased by 2.2 percent. That brings NS' total passenger growth for 2018 to 2.7 percent.
The police are urgently looking for the family of an underage Asian boy found wandering around the station hall of Utrecht Central Station on Monday evening, April 8th. The boy did not have his identity papers with him and told the police that he had been wandering for some time, looking for his father.
After being bullied her whole life, 20-year-old Kaya van den Dikkenberg decided to use Valentine's Day to draw attention to this problem. On Thursday she handed out "Valentine's Day cards" at Utrecht Central Station. But instead of a love letter, the cards contained letters written by people who are being bullied, RTL Nieuws reports.
The SOA AIDS Nederland foundation came up with a playful way to promote condom use in the run-up to World Aids Day on December 1st. The foundation is launching a pop-up store at Utrecht Central Station where you can try condoms to see which brand, type and size suits you best, the Telelgraaf reports.
People traveling through Utrecht Central Station on Monday morning should take delays into account due to police officers protesting for a better collective bargaining agreement, according to the police unions. Between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., the police will construct cordons around the station in a labor action they call "danger zone", NU.nl reports.
Travelers will only be able to enter and leave the station through these cordons. This will cause delays, according to police unions ACP, NPB, ANPV an VMHP.
The police will hinder train travelers at Utrecht Central Station during rush hour on Monday morning as part of their labor actions for a better collective bargaining agreement. Police officers will form a line at the station and passengers will only be able to enter through gaps in the line, ANP reports.
This action will happen between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Travelers should take delays into account, according to the police unions. According to the municipality of Utrecht, agreements were made with the police unions and the municipality expects no hindrance to the public.
Road users should expect a very busy rush hour on Monday morning. No train traffic is possible on one of the busiest routes in the country, due to maintenance work that is taking longer than expected. And rain and wind will only add to the problems.
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.
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.
A couple from Vught found a plastic bag full of letters dating from World War II at Utrecht Central Station on Monday. Rens and Maartje Zonnenberg would like to find the owner of the letters and posted a call for information on Facebook.
According to Rens, the letters are dated between 1942 and 1944. They are written in Dutch, but the old handwriting make them difficult to read, he said to newspaper AD. The bag was found on a bench on platform 18. "There are more than 100, 150 maybe", he said.
The central stations in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht will soon again have a large screen showing train information, NS announced. According to the rail company, the large screens are returning due to many requests from travelers.
NS does not yet know how big the screens will be. "But it will be a big screen with travel information", a spokesperson said to NOS. "The small screens will also continue to exist, but such a large screen is a good central point so you can quickly see when your train is leaving."
A 14-year-old girl was threatened, stabbed, assaulted and humiliated near Utrecht Central Station in January. Two other girls, aged 15 and 17 years from Deleen and Utrecht, appeared in court for the first time on Tuesday as the suspected perpetrators of this abuse, AD reports.
Not all polling stations opened on time in the Dutch parliamentary election on Wednesday. Polling stations in Almere, Friesland and Tilburg opened later than expected, due to "key problems".
An American fast food invasion seems poised for the Netherlands this year. A record number of five new-to-the-Netherlands American food chains will be opening in the country in 2017, according to Metro Nieuws.
There are still fewer trains traveling between Utrecht Central and Den Haag Central, though NS managed to get delays down to extra travel time of between 15 and 30 minutes, the rail company says on its website.
KPN completed its Long Range Wide Area-network for the Internet Of Things, making the Netherlands the first country in the world to have a so-called Lora-network with nationwide coverage
Fewer trains are currently traveling to and from Utrecht Central Station due to a switch malfunction. Delays are affected travelers to and from Schiphol, Den Bosch and Arnhem.
Only a very limited amount of train traffic will be possible from and to Utrecht Central Station on Monday morning. The construction works on the tracks around the station over the weekend took longer than expected and will continue into Monday morning, both NS and ProRail announced.
The rebuilding of Utrecht Central Station is costing significantly more than initially expected. So far the project is 53 million euros over budget.
Due to "multiple faults" the train traffic between Utrecht Central and Driebergen-Zeist, Houten, Leidsche Rijn and Utrecht Zuilen has come to a complete standstill. The disruption started around 11:15 a.m. NS initially stated that the problem should be cleared up around 2:00 p.m. but has since retracted that statement. "It is not yet known how long this will last", can now be read on the rail company's website.
The renovation of Utrecht Central Station is running a year behind and may go up to 100 million euros over the 270 million euro budget, the Financieele Dagblad reported on Thursday based on internal documents of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment.
The majority of the Tweede Kamer, lower house of parliament, wants NS to put higher gates at Rotterdam Central Station and Amsterdam Central Station.
