Why does Dutch transport come to a standstill after a few centimetres of snow?

Hundreds of flights cancelled, several train disruptions and endless traffic jams - all because of a few centimetres of snow. The Netherlands has screeched to a halt because of recent winter weather, but why? 

Dutch planes, trains and roads in chaos from snow

This week has seen absolute chaos for Dutch transport, with travellers stranded at Schiphol, trains barely running and hundreds of kilometres of traffic jams across the Netherlands. Other countries, like Switzerland, see far more snow than the Netherlands, yet their trains still run - this is a thought many residents have had in the past few days.

However, it snows more often in these countries, so they are better prepared for it. Switzerland, for example, experiences snow for up to six months a year, so the country invests more in keeping things running during wintery weather conditions. 

The ultimate reason that Dutch transport doesn’t run well when it snows is that it doesn’t happen often anymore. Between 1951 and 1980, around 44 days of snowfall could be expected per year, but this has more than halved to just 19 on average between 1995 and 2024. 

This only takes into account days where snow fell; days with heavy snowfall that sticks are much rarer in the Netherlands. "A situation like this – and by Dutch standards, there's a lot of snow – happens here once every five years,” weatherman Reinier van den Burg explains to AD. “The investments we'd have to make to manage it all would cost billions of euros. The benefits wouldn't outweigh the costs. It's better to suffer for a week than to make that enormous investment."

Fewer investments in travel during snowy conditions

With wintery weather, planes need to be de-iced to fly. This is very expensive and time-consuming, and requires special equipment and trained staff. Dutch airports invest less in de-icing because very wintery days don’t happen that often, and maintaining the equipment would be expensive for the whole year, possibly hiking up prices on already pricey plane tickets.

A similar reasoning is seen for Dutch public transport. While ProRail has already made improvements to the Dutch rail to make it more efficient during colder weather, the rail operator would need billions of euros to change the whole network for just a few days of heavy snow every few years.

“In Switzerland, they have snow for six months of the year and have therefore adapted their infrastructure accordingly,” ProRail spokesperson Andy Weimer told NOS. “They spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product on infrastructure, while we spend “only” 1,2 percent.”

Road traffic is also affected by the weather, not necessarily because of a lack of salt, but rather because there are more drivers on the road. The Netherlands has seen a 10 percent rise in the number of passenger cars, with 9,2 million vehicles on the road in 2025. So, even though Rijkswaterstaat, which maintains the country’s roads, has enough salt and has spread 80 million kilograms of salt so far - more than is usual for an entire winter - the busy road network means traffic jams are more likely, especially in icy weather.