Dutch state-owned rail company NS is still posting a loss despite growing post-Covid passenger numbers, its half-year results have shown. The company’s operational losses fell from €225 million a year ago to €26 million in the first six months of this year. The company called the results “still not good enough for a financially healthy NS”, predicting that the years ahead will be “financially challenging”. CEO Wouter Wouter Koolmees said the changing travel habits of the Dutch were one reason...
It’s astonishing the rail infrastructure is underfunded in the Netherlands. A flat country where you’d expect it to be fairly cheap to maintain rail networks
Well it should be, but it isn’t. We privatized our railroad and must suffer accordingly. The NS is almost the only true exploiter of our railway network (beside some local railroads, that have to be around to dodge Monopoly laws).
The NS got chopped up, leaving NS travelers (the public facing company) always in debt, whilst NS vastgoed (real estate) is taking in the money.
The brilliant thing? They don’t even need to look after the railway, as a separate company, ProRail, gets to manage the infrastructure. That company is gouvernemental, so we get the bill for that.
So we have a railroad that’s funded by the people, that hides it’s huge profits away in a shell company, and bleeds out our tax money.
Liberal policy ftw
It might be “underfunded” but the quality is super high. Very regular trains, always on time or within a minute or two, and the trains are in good condition.
That’s good news then, at least. And I’ve heard good things about the train stations as well.