NS cuts train timetables, blames staff shortages amid surge in complaints

Photo: Brandon Hartley

Train operator NS blamed staffing shortages on its decision to cut the number of services on some of its busiest lines from next week.

From 7 November, intercity services between Den Haag Hauptbahnhof and Amsterdam Hauptbahnhof, Rotterdam Hauptbahnhof and Utrecht Hauptbahnhof, and between Alkmaar station and Schagen and Haarlem stations will be reduced during off-peak hours and all day on Fridays. will be shipped.

Rush hour trains have also been shortened on some short-haul routes, such as Rotterdam to Dordrecht, Utrecht to Leiden, Oss to Den Bosch and The Hague to Gouda.

Bert Groenewegen, NS’s chief financial officer and deputy CEO, said last month that the company needs to shorten its schedule as it struggles to fill more than 2,000 vacancies among its 20,000 total workforce. I warned you.

“The last thing we want to do is reduce the number of trains running.” NS states on its website:“But we have to. Today, travelers often have to deal with canceled trains.”

The new timetable will go into effect on November 7th and will run until December 11th.

The announcement came as rail passenger group Rover reported a spike in complaints in October.

Rover said it had 1,749 complaints in September, 60% more than in 2019, the year before, when the pandemic caused a sharp drop in train and passenger numbers.

September is typically the month with the most customer complaints as college starts and commuters return from vacation. But in October, in his first 30 days, he had 2,650 reports.

Many of the complaints concerned work on the line that had not been adequately communicated to rail users.