Three newspapers dedicate the editorial spot to the troubles at Dutch Rail (NS). ‘It’s winter, the trains are standing still’.

‘It is to be feared that car users will not turn to the train in their droves after last weekend’, writes Trouw, referring to NS chief Bert Meerstadt’s wish that ‘every one become a fan of the NS’.
But that, the paper says, would not be entirely fair.
Blame
‘In a world covered in snow huge traffic jams and cancelled flights are considered perfectly normal but in the media only one means of transport is singled out for blame: the train’.
Not that the NS and ProRail, which runs the tracks, shouldn’t come in for a bit of flack. ‘Dozens of train services were cancelled and many trains arrived at their destinations hours too late. Everyone will get home, the NS said, but that was the least it could do’, the paper writes.
Passenger information, i.e. the complete lack of it, is the NS weak point and Trouw spares a thought for the beleaguered NS workers who have had to cope with irate passengers.
The paper keeps its sharpest barb for the politicians: ‘At the first sign of problems parliament called for an emergency debate, a waste of time if all that is in aid of is pointing at the NS and ProRail as the culprits. We know parliament is angry, there is no need to rub it in’.
Calm
If parliament really wants to solve this problem it would be best to do so in a calm atmosphere, Trouw concludes. ‘The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, heavily dependent on an extensive railway system. That makes it vulnerable. In bad weather any means of transport is bound to experience problems, including the car.’
The Volkskrant also has it in for the politicians. The Pavlovian slapstick that followed the great standstill – politicians pointing at the NS and the NS pointing at Prorail and Prorail pointing back at the NS – is so ‘predictable as to become very boring.’
Nerve
The finger pointing politicians have some nerve, the paper writes, seeing is was they who ‘split up the old NS with the promise that it would become more customer friendly and efficient. It was a political decision not to invest in rail infrastructure. The government accord is focused on ‘super highways’ rather than rail, in fact the money for the railway system has been cut by €210m.’
The Volkskrant’s message to indignant politicians is: pipe down or do something about it. Gratuitous references to the Swiss railways only serve to show that the Swiss are doing what Dutch politicians have failed to do: maintaining a good service by spending money on it.
Shambles
The Nrc is resigned: it’s winter, the trains are standing still. ‘We have an intensively used, partly superannuated railway system, what do we expect?’, the paper asks.
‘Passenger information was a shambles in spite of the NS taking over that service from ProRail who did an even worse job. The permanent political question remains how (in) effective the split is between passenger arm NS and rail operator ProRail’, the paper concludes wearily, as it files away the editorial to use another winter.