cheer when companies (like NS) enact such idiotic proposals (like dropping paper ticker). He clearly says that he doesn't use trains, because he prefers to drive, and yet he has very strong ideas about how people should use trains (actually he would rather prefer that they don't use). Basically he supports everything which makes rail usage less convenient, more complex, more expensive or else less attractive. Dropping Interrail goes in line with that, so that's why he supports dropping it.
NS is becoming more business oriented, a smart card create more opportunities to extract more money from passenger. I have nothing against rail transport as infrastructure, I have everything against diverting funds from road to rail project. But I'm the biggest support of profitable freight and passenger rail operations and high-speed, airline-style priced rail.
Complexity = opportunities for price discrimination = opportunities to earn money and be more competitive and profitable.
As I always wrote, I think infrastructure is something for governments to take care directly or indirectly, and that includes rail. What I can't cope with are operations of vehicles done by government entities or monopolies auctioned in blocks to private operators with few commercial freedom to set prices, routes etc. In essence, I want to kill the idea of a network of trains that must be coordinated, and leave the idea of a network of tracks, modern, high-speed, state-of-the-art signaled, that any private party can use. Like air or road or water transport.
I want to bring competition, for the sake of competition and choice, even if it degrades service level, for ideological reasons (I'm against state-sponsored monopolies). As a technology, modern trains are quite cool. As a monopoly-based system, it is a curse, a cancer on the economic freedoms that need to be dismantled. But that doesn't mean ripping out tracks or demolishing stations, just dismantling the operational framework and the very concept of a service networks centrally planned. They did it with airlines in the 1980s/1990s, before that time air travel was tightly regulated, national carriers had monopolies, fares were fixed, in many countries schedules of domestic flights were "timed" to offer connections with international flights etc. Free markets gave us Ryanair, Easyjet and the ability to travel to Norway or Portugal paying peanuts.
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In that sense of infrastructure, not vehicles, Pro-Rail TRACK network is abysmal: it uses ATB, an outdated system that can't cope with speeds faster than 140 km/h. The should deploy ERTMS-2 in 5 years throughout the network, which could easily allow speed-up of trains as many grade-crossings have been already removed and alignments, well, it is most a flat country here with straightened tracks, so, signaling allowing, not many track improvements would be required to put many lines running at 220 km/h. Yet, they are dropping the ball cancelling projects like the Zuiderzee line to Groningen and Germany.
Is NS no longer going to sell e-tickets too? I can't imagine that NS would be the only railway in Western Europe that doesn't sell tickets via the internet...
You can buy e-tickets in the future, I suppose, but you will have to load them in you OV Chipkaart. The smart card is already the medium of carrying of many discount plans, student free transport passes, senior concessions etc. So, once the interface is dealt with, the card will be the universal carry of all rail products.
A colleague of mine told me that German (DB) trains operating regional lines into Netherlands will be soon fit with OV Chipkaart check-in machines inside the trains used in those routes. Therefore, it will be possible for passengers travelling to/from Neteherlands to use OV Chipkaart to pay for the Dutch part of their journey.
What have you got against interrail?
It is a financially detrimental product that lost its reason for existence since the international rail market was liberalized. By financial detrimental I mean: rational use of rail for travel will usually mean advanced discount tickets + some national passes will provide cheaper travel. Those using passes are only making a good deal if they are overusing the network. And if so, if they are using rail for impractical journeys, or to travel 500km every day, they should pay accordingly. It would be like Shell selling a "free refuel" card that allows people who want to drive 3.000km in 5 days, like me, and taking a financial hit.
The bottom line is: I see passengers as costumers, as money pits to be dug out of their wallets and pay more if possible. I don't see them as using an essential service when they are travelling long distance, like it were health care or tertiary education.