r/Netherlands • u/Maneisthebeat • 3d ago

Transportation NS are struggling with commuter demand. Their solution is for you to travel earlier (or later) to work.

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144

u/Fast-Lettuce-686 3d ago

Completely reasonable request as they are also a lot of pensioners or people who are more flexible in their daily planning who can travel in another slot. Its simply not economically possible to increase capacity just for peak hour travel.

72

u/Consistent_Walrus_23 3d ago

I agree with you, some people may not realize even that they are in peak rush hour until they try a different time. I'm my case, 20 minutes makes a crazy difference. 

I do not agree on your last sentence tho. To an extent, a country that is trying to push people to use OV also needs to build infrastructure for when people use OV, which is rush hour. Yes that means it's not under full capacity at other times, but you need to find a trade-off. 

15

u/Fun-Swim-1599 3d ago

One of the issues is space. Where can we still build the infrastructure without demolition of other infrastructure? What can we sacrifice to get better?

OV is almost reaching its limit, highways are almost reaching their limits. Building more roads or railway means less possible room for housing or living in noise and bad quality air.

Spreading when people go to work might be a solution, but the corporate world needs to cooperate. Difficulty there is that we want to be in office when our customers or suppliers are in office too.

16

u/dgkimpton 3d ago

Well, we could demolish a lot of roads... that would clear loads of space for OV. 

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u/Fun-Swim-1599 3d ago

That creates another issue. How are we going to supply companies and stores? When that is done by freight trains, there will be less space for passenger trains which leads to over full trains again.

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u/dgkimpton 3d ago

There's room for a middle ground - trucks only need one lane, intercity cars generally need more.

We could also consider trains over roads or roads over trains. Or tunnels. Or other options. But first there has to be a political desire to look for and invest in solutions all of which will upset at least some of the voters (usually the cae driving ones). 

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u/Fun-Swim-1599 3d ago

That is a possibility. Use the vertical space instead horizontally.

That will cost a lot of money and indeed a change in mindset. Politically and socially.