Mismanagent and unwilling staff are the major problems. Next to that 20% of the passengers has since corona disappeared which has created a huge financial problem.

What’s the reason for unwilling staff though? I have a feeling that the passenger disappearance is an effect not a cause, it has a lot to do with unreliability of the service, which is one of the most if not the most important factor in determining the public transport usage.

NS workers and their work is one of the most important and essential ones in the Netherlands. So if you ask me, the management and the whole country better treat them right and keep them happy 

My question is weren’t their demands met in a satisfactory manner during the discussions earlier this month?

Yes they were. We're not unwilling, but as is the case in every branch these days: there's a serious shortage of staff. Not only are we short on drivers and conductors, but all over the company there’s not enough personnel available. Our planners (both personnel and rolling stock) are seriously short-staffed, drivers have a maximum amount of driving time (as do the conductor by the way). For this reason a lot of trains have been cancelled structurally. Add to that a lot of infrastructural problems (the biggest one being between Lelystad and Zwolle because of a massive incident concerning high-voltage lines being overloaded and dropping down on the catenaries) and you’ve got a ‘perfect storm’.

Yes, but the company should also remain profitable. Subsidies are legally not allowed because NS has a monopoly which was awarded without tendering.

I’m not a professional in this field but I feel like a correct response to shortages and other factors that affect the reliability of the system is to scale down the operation to a level where they can provide a reliable service that meets the decreased demand and addresses the increased worker dissatisfaction. They seem to have scaled the operations down and still don’t seem to handle the problem and this is suggestive of managerial problems. 

Come December, operations will be reduced even further to decrease the tension on the operation and its personnel, thus hopefully increasing overall reliability.

That will happen per December 11. NS is so inflexiible that they can't do it faster than that.

And even then it is uncertain if reliability will increase. Trains will be busier and fuller than ever because of the decrease in frequency. It takes just one cancelled train and the next one will be packed. And missing a connection to change trains means in many cases a thirty minutes to one hour's waiting time.

It is not specific as such to NL-many other countries suffer-and yes,mostly in transportation/train traffic from the same problems-and many also have frequent strikes from staff (this as a combi of high inflation and stable wages with their current strong position for demands). In Germany the nr of delays and cancellations in some areas is far higehr. I have noted this all by own experience as I travelled a lot in other countries-by train, the last monthes. Same problems also exist in many airports-too few security staff lading to excessive Qs and even need to cancel flights as to curb demand.

Shortage of staff is also felt when due to works some sectors have to get replacement buses-in some cases these were not available (bus yes, driver no).

If the 20% decrease mentioned above is real, then packing of the trains shouldn’t be a as big of an issue. I think the packing happens partly due to unforeseen cancellations and overall reduced reliability. I’d much rather go in a full train, but know that I’ll get to wherever I’m going, instead of having frequent trains half of which gets stuck somewhere in the middle of my commute.

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts.

The problem doesn't seem to be that there are too few trains in total, but they aren't when and where they're needed, which may be due to the shortage of staff in the planning department.