Road users, train passengers and travelers at Schiphol experienced problems on Saturday as a result of delays. Many Dutch people had to drive slowly in Germany and France due to holiday crowds, trains in the Randstad in particular were canceled due to staff shortages and queues at Schiphol were again far beyond the departure hall.
In Germany, traffic drove slowly south of Munich in the direction of the Austrian Kufstein on Saturday morning, the ANWB reports. The delay here was up to an hour and a half. It is also busy on the route to the Tauerntunnel via Salzburg.
In Switzerland there are traffic jams at the Gotthard tunnel and the even busier San Bernardino tunnel. In France, road users mainly on the A7 between Lyon and Valence are faced with delays, partly due to bad weather.
Train traffic in the Randstad in particular experienced many problems due to train failures as a result of staff shortages at the NS. The problems occurred on the Amsterdam-Alkmaar, Amsterdam-Utrecht and Utrecht-The Hague routes. This led to extra travel time.
Both NS and Schiphol have a staff shortage
There are approximately eleven hundred vacancies at the railways. The railway company is not only short of drivers and conductors, but also IT staff, mechanics, security staff, service employees and shop staff at the stations.
Due to the large crowds, lines at Schiphol Airport once again formed into the open air. The airport is struggling with a lack of staff this spring season, which means that waiting times for passengers are increasing considerably. Schiphol itself calls the crowds on Saturday “manageable”, but messages are circulating on social media of disgruntled travelers who had to wait for hours.
‘Didn’t believe in hell until I arrived at Schiphol’
A traveler wrote on Twitter: “I didn’t believe in hell until I arrived at Schiphol today.” The message includes photos of long lines, both inside and outside the departure halls.
Due to the crowds during the Whitsun weekend, office staff have also been deployed to manage the crowds at the airport. These employees help, among other things, with checking the flight times of passengers, who are allowed to enter the departure halls no more than four hours before their flight.
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