49
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
49 points (98.0% liked)
Europe
8484 readers
3 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe ๐ช๐บ
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, ๐ฉ๐ช ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's astonishing the rail infrastructure is underfunded in the Netherlands. A flat country where you'd expect it to be fairly cheap to maintain rail networks
Well it should be, but it isn't. We privatized our railroad and must suffer accordingly. The NS is almost the only true exploiter of our railway network (beside some local railroads, that have to be around to dodge Monopoly laws).
The NS got chopped up, leaving NS travelers (the public facing company) always in debt, whilst NS vastgoed (real estate) is taking in the money.
The brilliant thing? They don't even need to look after the railway, as a separate company, ProRail, gets to manage the infrastructure. That company is gouvernemental, so we get the bill for that.
So we have a railroad that's funded by the people, that hides it's huge profits away in a shell company, and bleeds out our tax money.
Liberal policy ftw
It might be "underfunded" but the quality is super high. Very regular trains, always on time or within a minute or two, and the trains are in good condition.
That's good news then, at least. And I've heard good things about the train stations as well.