Groenewegen says the company is trying to reduce the staff shortages. Employees are being sought for more than 2,000 open positions out of a total of 20,000 jobs. According to Groenewegen, this gap cannot be filled by working harder with the current workforce.
“If we continue like this, we may have to decide to scale down our timetable even further,” says Groenewegen. By this he means even further than was announced in August. It was then indicated that in the new timetable, which will start to take effect in December 2022, there will be 10% fewer trains than in 2019, before covid-19 took effect.
“If we continue like this, we may have to decide to scale down our timetable even further,”
GroenewegenRecently, there has been a sharp increase in passenger complaints about overcrowded trains. Many other travelers complain that they have to stand during their journey, or that they cannot board the train they have planned at all.
Groenewegen is also concerned about other threats. On Monday, the Ministry of Infrastructure announced the conditions under which NS may operate trains from 2025. The cabinet would allow international destinations such as Berlin, Frankfurt, London and Paris to allow other parties to “keep the option open to cut even more domestic lines from our main rail network”, Groenewegen said.
Groenewegen does not believe that Brussels is demanding this from the Netherlands. “I don’t think other European countries are listening to Brussels. In Sweden, spending has stopped,” he says. “And also in France and Brussels it is the national railways that are allowed to run the trains.”
