National malfunction: NS expects normal train traffic again on Monday

The NS expects that the normal timetable can largely be restarted on Monday. From Sunday afternoon, the NS was troubled by a major national technical failure, as a result of which no trains ran at all on Sunday.

NS advises travelers to check the travel planner on Monday before departure for current information. International trains are not affected by this disruption. “Although the cause of the malfunction has now been resolved, the impact is significant,” NS said in a statement a statement.

“In order to be able to start up reliably, systems must be updated and trains must be brought to the right place. That takes time,” according to the NS. The NS expects that as many trains as possible will be able to run according to the normal timetable on Monday morning.

System stopped working
The outage affected the system that makes up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. According to the NS, this system is necessary to travel safely and on time. If something goes wrong somewhere on the track, the system adapts to it. This was no longer possible due to the outage.

The current travel information was also disrupted. The travel advice in the travel planner showed no delays or canceled trains.

Earlier in the day, the NS reported that the problems would be resolved at five o’clock, which was later adjusted to eight o’clock and eventually the message came that no more trains are running.

Regional carriers
The trains do run on the routes of regional carriers, but this applies to the Maaslijn (connection between Nijmegen and Roermond through the Land van Cuijk).

Buses were not used, the NS said. Because the outage is national, and it concerns such large numbers, that was not going to fit. “That is impossible,” said a spokeswoman for the NS.

The regional buses did run on Sunday, but Arriva, for example, said that it could not run any extra buses, because all drivers had already been deployed. Those buses were packed all day long and sometimes stops had to be skipped.

Thorough investigation
Tjalling Smit, member of the Board of Directors of the NS, apologized to travelers on Sunday evening. “We are going to thoroughly investigate the cause and how we can prevent this in the future.”

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