Dutch Rail wants to reduce the amount of weight the government gives to passenger opinions when determing whether it has met annual targets, RTL news reports on Friday.

The 100% state-owned company hopes to cut the level of the fines it has to pay to the government for missing targets if passenger views are downgraded.

The NS was fined €2.75m over 2012 for failing to hit performance targets.

Currently, passengers are asked about seven aspects of service but the NS wants to reduce this to one, general position, RTL says. This means they would only fail once, rather than seven times.

Passenger organisations have criticised the idea, as have MPs.