The NS wants to compete with airline companies and have the high-speed train be seen as an alternative mode of transport. And in order to do so, they want to schedule more high-speed train journeys to international destinations. New timetable plans have been proposed.
The NS plans include upping the journeys between Amsterdam, Schiphol, Rotterdam and Breda on the Intercity direct from four times an hour to five. One of these journeys will also continue onwards to Brussels. Intercity trains will also be scheduled eight times an hour between Utrecht and Gouda, for example, to ensure the accessibility of major Dutch cities.
Before the NS’ plans regarding the new schedule for train journeys can be put into place, they must first be approved by the local authorities and the consumer associations that fall under LOCOV, the umbrella organisation representing passengers and interest groups. The plans must also be made concrete by ProRail. All being well, the new timetable will come into force at the end of this year.
In order to make international train journeys more efficient, ProRail is working hard to make platforms 15b and 1, in Amsterdam and Rotterdam respectively, suitable for passport and security checks when checking in. This work will be finished in May.
The changes to the stations in Amsterdam and Rotterdam are important, as the high-speed train, the Eurostar, will travel between London, Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam three times a day from the end of 2018. The third journey of the day will not stop in Brussels and will take a record time of 3,5 hours.