Developments

Easier and more enjoyable

We want to make national and international travel on public transport easier and more enjoyable for our customers by giving them access to pleasant stations, comfortable trains and more opportunities for transport to and from the station. Train travel is also environmentally friendly and better for our climate. NS wants to maintain the advantage of being a more sustainable alternative.

The customer comes first

One travel card for everyone and for all public transport. That is the goal that NS, together with Connexxion, GVB (Amsterdam), HTM (Den Haag)  and RET (Rotterdam) Trans Link Systems (TLS), has set. Thanks to the OV-chipkaart, passengers can easily get around with public transport without having to use separate tickets for the train, metro, tram or bus. 
Automatic checking at gates at the stations improves security: you can only get to the platform if you have a reason to be there.

Accurate and up to date travel information is very important to passengers. For this reason, a mobile website (m.ns.nl) and a travel planner Xtra app for smartphones are available, in addition to the travel planner on NS.nl. Naturally, our personnel are also available on and around the train to provide passengers with travel advice.

And there's more. Particularly during disruptions, standard travel advice for our customers still comes up short. This was made painfully clear during the period of heavy snowfall in the winter of 2010/2011. For this reason, we continue to invest time and money into ensuring that our customers will always have access to accurate and up to date travel information in the future.

From door to door

A train journey is one part of a customer's total journey. We want to make the journey to the station, the time spent at the station and the journey from the station convenient and comfortable. Where necessary, we also facilitate transport to and from our stations. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine cities without the OV-fiets. But we also want to use the NS Fiets (storage areas), Greenwheels, Qbuzz and Q-park to make travel to and from the station as simple as possible. We are also investing in projects to make our stations more pleasant. We are busy making the stations into places where passengers feel comfortable and where businesses want to set up shop. Particularly the larger hubs are dynamic locales, where a multitude of activities take place: living, working, shopping, learning and recreation.

Sustainability and commitment

Our societal role involves certain important responsibilities, particularly the careful balance of various interests when carrying out our operations. That is why it is a matter of course that the three P's - People, Planet and Profit - are integrated into our business. We are closely involved in the ups and downs experienced by our personnel, customers and other fellow humans. We try to keep our operations as environmentally friendly as possible. You can find more about sustainability and social engagement elsewhere on the site, under NS and society.

Europe

Not just NS, but also Europe is enthusiastically entering a new age of railway transport. The borders between European nations are fading. NS wants to be a prominent player in the new border-free Europe. With NS International we are working on good links to the European high-speed network and comfortable connections to Paris, Brussels, Cologne, London and Frankfurt.

NS subsidiary Abellio provides train and bus travel in a number of countries in Europe. Abellio is active in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Czech Republic.