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Now what the heck are they doing!?
I almost never travel by train (anymore) and I thoroughly disgust the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways), and this weekend I was remindend once again why. I had to travel to Den Haag, tried to PIN using my creditcard at the ticket machine and found out this is not possible with NS ticket machines. So I get in the train and walk up to a railroad conductor, who, without even saying hello, demands my ticket. I explained the situation to him and pulled out my ID, which I, as a lawfull citizen, always carry with me in the interest of combating terrorism (although the € 45,- fine is a much better incentive for both me and the government).
This guy looks at me like a cow looks at an oncoming train and calls in two colleagues. Together they start barking at me like I'm some criminal; Who the heck did I think I was? This was intolerable, it just couldn't be done like this, this brought huge extra costs to the NS and they would turn me over to the police if I didn't fully cooperate. They "granted" me a ticket to Roosendaal for 40% extra and a € 10,- administration fee. There I would be thrown out, it was just not their problem.
In short: I've never been treated as rudely as this all my life, and only because I was forced to buy a ticket from the railway conductor. Even Russian militia is more polite than these three were.
My only option was to exit in Roosendaal, find a cash machine, PIN some cash with my creditcard there and walk back to buy a ticket. However, all counters were closed and the ticket machines of the Dutch Railways don't take bills! So once more I had to get in the train, find a railway conductor and try to explain to him again. Fortunately these two remembered the term "friendliness" and the concept of "necessity" so they sold me a ticket without extra charge or higher tariff for the remainder of the trip. Kudo's!!!
I'm typing this in the train on my way back. We had the same problem again, but this time we immediately good a nice railroad conductor who by the way told us that new company policy would force him to charge people like us with an immediate € 35,- fine! The conductors themselves are understandably angry about this, and see absolutely no good in the policy.
In the meantime I have to wait another 20 minutes for the train to leave, because the last one didn't bother to wait for a lousy 3 minutes for the other one to link up. On top of that it will take over 20 minutes longer today because all intercities are forced to stop at every station because of a defective signalpost.
I have utterly and completely had it with NS, but what's to do? I do not know how much extra it takes to send me a bill, and neither do the bullish conductors, but I do know that it does not cost € 10,- plus 40% charge on top of the already completely ridiculous tariff. So, considering my options to express my powerlessness against the monopolist; Although I don't know the conductor's names I will file a couple of compaints against them. I'll ask my money for the return trip back because of the extra delays (which probably isn't going to happen, but what the heck). I'll file a protest and start a lively conversation about the bill to raise the administration costs extensively, so at least I'll get my money's worth.
Next, I'll look up a false adress which I can use next time and I'll take an anti-agression-course. Because although I've never fought in my life and I've never even been in contact with the police, it was a close call on these three as I felt an incredible urge to punch their barking faces to bloody pulp for so much unreasonability against a powerless person. And I won't forget this next time I'm watching NS complaining about rising agression in the trains.
Being unreasonable encourages unreasonability, and the Nederlandse Spoorwegen's unreasonability defies all imagination. Of course freeloaders cost too much money and of course trains are not cheap. However, tariffs have almost doubled since the railways were privatised and back then you could even buy a seat, these days only a transit will do. As long as a single person with a reduction can travel cheaper by train than by car, they don't care. All we got back was anti-social and rude policies, much more defects and james, worse trains which look better, beatifull stations which are much too expensive, a huge extra body of bureaucracy which has so little notion of what's out there that I sometimes wonder whether they've even seen a train on the inside, complete mismanagement, and let's not forget Rails, that stupid magazine nobody ever reads.
We and all the generations after us puke on the neo-liberals and their never tiring capitalistic battle for forced liberalisation and privatisation.
The train is a public transport. So it's for the people. It's not particularly meant for people to get from behind the wheels of their cars, it's meant for those who don't own and/or can't afford one. Besides, there isn't much in the NS's policies that is meant to increase passengerkilometer volume. Instead, they alienate entire sections of their clientéle, most notably senior citizens and people just out for a day.
But remember: This all makes perfect sense. The NS is privatised. It's a private company which sole purpose is to make profit. That's pretty hard considering the completely insane corporate structure the government thought out for the project, but what the heck, profits must be made. Customer satisfaction, a seat, training and work satisfaction for the conductors, decent maintenance, good IT infrastructure and reasonable price are all shoved aside for cold, hard short-term pecunia. The only thing keeping them within reasonable margins are the contractual demands by our Wise Government, on penalties of huge fines, which of course cannot be deducted from profits (even aside from the fact that they pulled out a complete arsenal of tricks to get around the rules and regulations and to brush up performance figures)
That Wise Government privatised so they could get rid of the troubles (meanwhile making them a grindstone around our necks), and to create competition between railways. So where is this competition!? O wait, there it is, on those pieces of track and stations deemed unprofitable. Those were closed down by NS because they just weren't enough people taking the train anymore. They didn't care whether or not the remaining people depended on the train, because profits were to be made. Those tracks are now partly being covered by fourth-hand third-grade trains in order to promote competition between railways.
In the meantime freeloaders have nearly become criminals, and people who can't buy a ticket because of lack of counters or old deprecated crap are by definition freeloaders. And although every conductor is equipped with horrendously expensive HP iPaq they still have to write the tickets by hand. They can't even check and verify the ID's or adresses given with the thing, something a very simple GPRS-connection can already manage. And I'll sign for an authorisation of automatic payment if the option were offered.
But besides all that: What's wrong with just getting in, walking up to the conductor and buying a ticket with him/her? The argument that it costs too much is bullocks with al the huge cost-cutting measures NS took, closing down almost two-thirds of all counters permanently, and extra costs due to crappy IT services is, to use the words of the conductors, "not my problem". And the € 10,- administration fee should be more than enough to cover any extra costs resulting from the procedure.
The NS spend all it's public sympathy by their completely careless and anti-social behaviour. People are getting immobile because of it, and that hurts a society right at its' core. And the railways, as even their own employees will tell you, are completely deaf and autistic to the objections and just plainly goes on. Public resistance is tolerated at best untill it dies out, and the best case scenario is that they lend a hand by making a few extremely minor commitments which can be reversed later.
In the meantime they're complaining about falling numbers of passengers, too much work, too much agression, standards that are too high and of course profit margins that are too low. And each time they proudly present another trick be able to raise the tariffs for another 5%, and they never understand the gulf of criticism this causes.
My opinion? Halve prices and make damn sure you got enough wagons to process the huge extra volumes of passengers and to let them sit down. Restructure the dozens of small companies and bring them together in the logical organisational units Transport, Materials & Equipment, Infrastructure and Planning. The latter three should be state-owned or non-profit organisations at the least. Make sure Transport gets the badly needed competition and give everybody access to the trains of Materials & Equipment. And the local stations should get in the hands of their respective municipalities to prevent (too much) squandering. Lastly, every legal way of paying should be supported everywhere and conductors should be screened for potential assholeness. I mean, come on! :-)
