NS versus NMBS: A personal and statistical drama

The Green Cow

The story that made the highlights

People living in Belgium or The Netherlands had a real thrilling soap to follow last winter: the tragic story of the Fyra. The Fyra was supposed to bring people in no time from Amsterdam to Brussels (and the other way round, o course). A new fancy train (the V250) was used for this project. From the very rst day the trains had a lot of technical problems. One of the problems was that it was not guaranteed they could pass the border between Belgium and The Netherlands. At that point the train had to go from one power net to another and, at the same time, had to change from one security system to another. Apparently, this was to much of a change for this young train and it tended to stop at the crossing of the border. An other problem was the cold winter. The amount of snow was exceptionally in the winter and spring of 2013. This poor trains where used to the nice and warm climate of their country of origin, Italy, and could not stand the snow and ice. The moment they started to lose parts of their body, the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS, Dutch Railway Company) and Nationale Maatschappij voor Belgische Spoorwegen (NMBS, Belgian National Railway Company) decided to take the new trains temporarily from the tracks till the problems were solved. A few months later this decision became a denitive one, as there did not seem to be a solution for the problem. Besides from the these problems, the Fyra project did not seem to be popular, as the prices were a lot higher than they used to be. (I payed three times more compared to the old slower option the only time I took one of the V250 trains.) And it was not pleasant at all to be in a noisy, bumpy train that sounded at some places as if it wanted to leave the tracks never to come back. (Not to speak from the sloppy test drives. Up to 3000km according to one source, which is not very impressive if you realize that Brussels are around 200km apart and they thus did not even go ten times the distance back and forth between the two cities.)

The story that did not make the highlights

The story of the Fyra is well-known in both countries, both by people that use the train regularly and by those that rarely travel by train. However, 1

there are stories that do not make it to the highlights. Stories that are only known to people that travel regularly with the trains of both NS and NMBS. People (or animals ) like me. I am not just talking about delays which are that frequent that one gets used to it. I am talking mostly about all the canceled trains, all the times you get dumped in a station without a clue how to get home, the unfriendly and unhelpfully people you have to deal with if you want some information, et cetera. Not so long ago I was dumped by the NS two times within 8 days and no one could or wanted to provide me with information how to get home. The rst time I had to wait for almost three hours on a station over forty kilometers away from home and there was not a single possibility to get home. Except for waiting, till they repaired their signal (which was broken, causing the whole situation). Further, the lady at the information desk could not think of anything other to say than that it was not her fault. Note that airlines are obligated to provide you with food and drinks if you are delayed for more than two hours, but that railway companies have no obligations like this at all. I told my story on the Facebook account of the NS and got a very irritating response back, saying that they try most of the times to provide an alternative and that they hoped my next experience with them would be better. Which was not the case: within eight days I was dumped again by the NS. This time it was due to a suicide on the tracks. I admit that they can not really help it in such a case. The stupid thing was that I could not go further than Rotterdam Central Station while I wanted to go to Delft Station. For those not familiar with the geography of The Netherlands: Delft is about halfway between Rotterdam Central Station and The Hague Central Station. The suicide happened between Delft Station and The Hague Central Station. (That information was provided by the NS.) However, there were also no trains from Rotterdam Central Station to Delft. Why was never explained and they also did not give you a clue on how to go from Rotterdam to Delft. In the end I gured out how to do it: I had to make a detour trough Gouda and The Hague (sic) and then go by tram. A journey that took almost two hours for a distance you can do in 15 minutes if everything is going as planned. I could go on with stories like these for hours. I traveled a lot with both the NMBS and the NS over the past two to three years which provided me with enough stories of failures to ll a complete book. However the two stories I told here made me wonder who is worse: the NS or the NMBS. My personal answer is, that it depends on what you nd worse. The NMBS seems to be worse in terms of pure delays. Which will get to your nerves quickly if you have to commute. The NS seems to be worse in terms of canceled trains. Including trains canceled due to work on the tracks, which happens almost every weekend. (In that case they sometimes use buses to bias the tracks where the works are, but you will always need at least half 2

an hour extra.)

The statistical story

Unfortunately, data on the performance of both the NS and the NMBS are dicult to get. I found only some data of the last few years. 1 These data show a few interesting things. Table 1 shows the percentage of trains that was on time from 2000 till 2010. The main percentage of trains that where on time was 91.5 (SD 1.66) for the NS and 90.6 (2.21) for the NMBS. This dierence was not statistically signicant, which means that it is most probably due to coincidence. 2 However, if you look at the trend over the years, you can see an interesting dierence between both railway companies. The average percentage of trains that is on time is increasing with 0.47% per year in the NS. 3 For the NMBS this percentage is decreasing with 0.49% per year. 4 . This means that the NS seems to be improving its punctuality. On the contrary, the punctuality of the NMBS seems to be getting worse and worse. 5 Another interesting number to see is the percentage of canceled trains for each year. I didnt nd much data about trains canceled by the NMBS. For 2009 and 2010 the data are in table 2. The mean percentage of canceled trains was 2.2 for the NS and 1.7 for the NMBS. This dierence was not statistically signicant, which is due to the fact that I had only data for two years. In conclusion, my personal impressions seems to be in accordance with the data: the NMBS has more delays while the NS is canceling more trains. Qoud erat demonstrandum.

A longer and intenser search for data will no doubt reveal more than I found. However, I do write this blog as an unpaid hobby, so I dont have the time and resources required for a stringent analysis. 2 P=0.29, two sample T-Test with unequal variances. 3 Linear regression (in R) of the percentage on year, P=0.001 4 Linear regression (in R) of the percentage on year, P=0.010 5 This results can be biased by the fact that the trains that where canceled are not included in the gures on delayed trains.

NS NA 88.2 89.3 90.5 92.3 91.8 91.8 93 93 92.8 92.5

NMBS 90.7 91.2 92.6 92.6 93.2 91.9 90.6 89.2 90.2 88.2 85.7

Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Table 1: Percentage of trains that where on time for NS and NMBS

NS 2.2 2.0

NMBS 1.9 1.7

Year 2010 2009

Table 2: Percentage of canceled trains for NS and NMBS