1y ago

Dutch rail still not on track to financial health, figures show - DutchNews.nl

www.dutchnews.nl Dutch rail still not on track to financial health, figures show - DutchNews.nl

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 ...

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And their roads? What about their roads? Do their highways pay for themselves? Why is it that public transit must always be budget neutral or make a profit, but it's perfectly okay if, like in the US, the government pays $10 for every $1 a driver spends on driving?
- Cars are heavily taxed in the Netherlands, afaik both when you buy them and then yearly.
  
  I'd be very interested to see some numbers here. I share the sentiment of the OP: there's often talk about public transport being unprofitable but I haven't come across any conversation about how much it costs to maintain our road infrastructure and how much of it is covered by taxes.
  Meanwhile, using a car to go between two cities in the Netherlands always works out cheaper than taking the train and the difference has gone up significantly in the last few years.
  
  Every three months for me. Around 100-150 eur.
  
  How is it that every time I learn something about the Netherlands, it only ever sounds better?

FYI. Your account is flagged as a bot account. If you are not actually a bot (which you don't apear to be) you should go into your account settings and uncheck the bot account box.
- Thanks, that checkbox was definitely not descriptive enough for me to notice.

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
- 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.
- 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

I appreciate the pun in the title.

18 comments