August 22, 2019

‘Dutch Rail discriminates against travellers when it comes to privacy’

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:22 pm

Michiel Jonker of Arnhem is a big defender of privacy. He is going to court to fight for his right to use an anonymised public transport chip card used for trams, subways, buses, and trolleys if you’re in Arnhem—a card that can also be used for trains.

One of the many issues is that only people who agree to give up their personal details as well as all their travel information can use a Dutch Rail discount on their card, giving them, in one instance, a 40% discount a year for an annual fee that I also pay, that keeps going up and that I don’t remember what it is.

Jonker uses an anonymised card, but it’s also not at all anonymous. “When you top up your card, the top-up doesn’t go onto your card, it goes to a sort of bank account owned by TransLink Systems [the company that makes the cards—Orangemaster]. The moment you top up your card, the company registers where and when you’ve done that.”

Jonker claims that the Dutch Data Protection Authority is too easily convinced by the arguments of Dutch Rail for registering information such as sex, email address and other personal details. Dutch Rail says that registering such information is necessary to combat fraud and ensure security, and yes, if a company can prove that such details are necessary to function then Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will back them up. However, if that cannot be proven, then Jonker has a point and Dutch Rail will have a problem.

Regardless, only travellers with one of the many non-anonymous types of cards can get travel discounts. Jonker explains that for decades, train staff checked paper tickets and that worked just fine.

Watch the video below in Dutch:

(Link: Omroep Gelderland; video: YouTube / Omroep Gelderland)

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February 11, 2019

Train app to find a seat in real time rolls out

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am

For years, there’s been a Dutch Rail app called ‘NS reisplanner’ (‘NS travel planner’) that helps you sort out train travel. Soon enough, the app will also let you find an actual place to sit in the train, in real time.

After a successful trial that started last year in April, the ‘find a seat’ feature will be integrated into NS reisplanner, with specific trains gradually added, such as Utrecht-Nijmegen. The app uses a sensor per train carriage to see if there’s anywhere to sit and displays the information in the app using the colours green, orange and red. As of next year, the whole country should be covered, according to a spokesperson from Dutch Rail.

The app is available for both iPhone and Android in Dutch and in English.

(Links: rtvutrecht.nl, androidplanet.nl, Photo by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

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November 5, 2017

Do not break our trains, please — a visit to the Dutch Rail workshop in Amsterdam

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 2:08 pm

The Amsterdam onderhoudsbedrijf Watergraafsmeer, the workshop of Dutch Rail in Amsterdam and one of a few dozen in the country, opened its doors to the general public yesterday.

The workshop is part of a large classification yard in the east of Amsterdam and can be tricky to reach, which is why Dutch Rail had borrowed the Mat ’54 (a hondekop, dog’s head) electric train from Stichting Hondekop to shuttle visitors between Central Station and the yard.

The Mat ’54s were in service between 1956 and the mid-1990s. They were replaced by the very similar looking Mat ’64, which lacked the distinctive ‘dog’s head’ (introduced to better protect the driver) and which were used into the 2000s.

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Also on display were a German ICE high speed train, a postal train, several regular trains that may or may not be in service still (sorry for the dearth of details, I am not a train geek) and Dutch Rail’s executive train, De Kameel (The Camel).

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The latter’s official designation is NS20. Only one was ever built, in 1954 by Rotterdam train builder Allan. It was scrapped for spare parts in 1991, but brought back in 2008. The train consists of two rooms with a clear view of the tracks front and back, a toilet and a kitchenette, with dual cabs built in the roof.

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The whole event, mostly taking place in what Nedtrain claims is the largest plastic building in Europe, was a rather charming affair with engineers still working (behind barricade tape) on trains, necessitating house rules such as “leave our tools alone”, “never stick your fingers in machines” and “please leave our trains the way you found them”.

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Scrapped train parts such as signs and emergency brakes, familiar to anyone who has commuted on Dutch trains, were sold for 20 euro each, the proceeds going to a good cause.

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September 22, 2016

A regional Dutch accent means a smaller paycheck

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:22 pm

Women make less than men – check, white people make more than others – check, and in the same vein, Dutch people who speak with a regional accent get paid less, according to economy professor Jan van Ours of Tilburg University. Van Ours noticed that age, level of education or coming from a village or a city didn’t make a difference, but accents did.

Van Ours, who grew up with the dialect of Goeree-Overflakkee, South Holland, says nobody had ever done research into the economic impact of speaking with a regional accent before. While 40% of the Dutch have grown up with an accent, it is possible and plausible that people are discriminated against because of the way they speak. He also says that someone with a heavy Limburg accent working at a call centre could be more difficult to understand than someone who speaks standard Dutch (‘Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands’). I admit I called Dutch Rail once and hung up on someone who had an accent I couldn’t place that was so thick, I had no clue what they were saying. And sometimes when co-blogger Branko is tired and speaks to me with his Limburg accent, I have no clue, either.

There’s enough prejudice going around that if someone speaks with a heavy regional accent they are perceived as being dumber – I get this as a foreigner and it’s normal. Confirming this prejudice, foreigners and migrants also take lessons to get rid of their accent and sound more like standard Dutch speakers, including born and bred Amsterdam residents who speak with the city’s dialectal accent. Some people from areas like Het Gooi, North Holland have a specific accent, but because it’s a rich part of the country people don’t point out their accent as quickly as they do others.

24oranges HQ is run by two people with regional accents, but I don’t see us doing anything about it anytime soon.

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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September 6, 2016

Granny swats the daylights out of Pokémons

Filed under: Animals,Gaming by Orangemaster @ 9:48 pm

Pokémon

A health insurance company active in the east of the country has recently made a video (see below) that is really only made to watch an elderly lady treat Pokémons to the business end of a flyswatter.

Then there’s other Dutch business that have carved out a piece of the action using Pokémons. A Dutch sex toy shop asks on Twitter ‘What Pokémon is this?’, showing a dratini that’s more of the vibrating kind. Then there’s someone who claims Dutch Rail has a train running late because of a Snorlax on the rails. And then there’s more serious stuff like the World Wide Fund using a meme of a rhinoceros saying in English ‘Don’t catch ’em’.

The video is for fans and haters alike, so check it out.

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November 25, 2015

Schiphol train station to be renamed in December

Filed under: Aviation by Orangemaster @ 11:36 am
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Dutch Rail has announced that on 14 December it will be changing the name of the train station Schiphol, the national airport station often pronounced ‘Skip-pole’, to Schiphol Airport which will help travellers identify it better as an airport, including a wee airplane pictogram to make it perfectly clear.

One wonders why Dutch Rail didn’t think of that ages ago, as Schiphol is more often than not referred to as Amsterdam Airport Schiphol just like it says on the building or Amsterdam Airport. After all the Netherlands has Eindhoven Airport and Rotterdam The Hague Airport, and many more with that formulation.

The history of the name Schiphol (literally ‘ship hole’ or ‘ship grave’) is interesting as it is unclear and based on theories. No ship wrecks were found when the land was reclaimed. The name could have possibly been related to the portaging of ships, dragging them from one body of water to another or having to do with a ‘hol’ that is a ‘low lying are of land’, as in ‘Holland’.

Using the name Schiphol for airplanes in Dutch is as amusing as using the word ‘shipping’ for sending parcels nowadays that doesn’t involve any ships.

(Links: www.rtvnh.nl, en.wikipedia.org)

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May 17, 2015

Train driver stops for wounded cat

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 1:17 pm

intercity-train-dutch-rail-kismihokLast Monday a Dutch Rail train driver discovered a wounded cat on the rail road between Utrecht and The Hague near Gouda.

The driver of the ‘intercity’ train stopped his vehicle so that the conductor could take the cat on board. An animal ambulance took the cat from The Hague Central Station to a vet. According to AD, tweeting passengers praised Dutch Rail staff for their quick action.

Although it is unclear what how the cat had become injured, its front left paw had to be amputated, as had part of its tail. The bridge of its nose is also damaged and it has a concussion. The animal hospital reported on Facebook that all things considered the cat is doing well and is adapting quickly to its new situation. Although many people have shown interest in acquiring Juna, as the ambulance staff have called her, the hospital will wait two weeks for the original owner to report.

In 2013, a train driver in Limburg stopped to pick up a cat lying on the tracks. In 2014, a rail road employee caught a pregnant cat that had walked off the train in Enschede and brought it to a shelter.

(Photo by Flickr user Kismihok, some rights reserved)

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October 14, 2014

Crazy verdict: Dutch Rail may abolish paper tickets

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 8:44 am

lady-justice-chaoukiThe business court of The Hague has determined that Dutch Rail can abolish paper train tickets even though the law says a traveller has a right to an objective proof of the right to travel.

The court felt that the new electronic travel card system (OV Chipkaart) suffices because there are five places where you can confirm you have the right to travel. Arnoud Engelfriet lists them all:

  1. The display of the electronic gate at the time of checking in.
  2. The display of the vending machine.
  3. A paper print-out at the service desk.
  4. A transaction data listing on the Dutch Rail website.
  5. The display of the train conductor’s travel card reader.

Engelfriet and his commenters point out that there are numerous problems with this verdict.

  1. The electronic display only shows that you’ve checked in for a very short time, especially if somebody checks in a fraction of a second later (this happens a lot during rush hour).
  2. If you are in a rush, you are not going to stand in line at the vending machine or service desk.
  3. The Internet listings are only updated after a significant delay.
  4. Train conductors are “masters at being impossible to find”, according to Rikus Spithorst of travellers association ‘Voor Beter OV’ (‘for better public transport’). (Doesn’t that make train conductors hobbits?)

Basically this means that you either show up five minutes early for your daily commute to double check you are actually checked in or you pay a tax in the form of fines every time you fail to check in for whatever reason.

What bothers me is that in the case of a conflict between a traveller and Dutch Rail (and only the OV Chipkaart in place) travellers now have to rely completely on the antagonistic party to provide them with the proof that they have in fact travelled legally. Travelling without a valid ticket is a criminal offence, so why would the state make rules that make it practically impossible for a suspect to defend their innocence?

See also:

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October 2, 2014

Dutch Rail sings to shafted train travellers

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:18 pm

Why say sorry if you can sing it, make people smile and rip them off even more? That is exactly what Dutch Rail decided to do when they apparently hired jazz singer songwriter Baer Traa to pose (!) as fictitious train conductor Job van Gils.

Dutch Rail has been making a veritable fortune by not paying back any money owed to people who forgot to check out with their public transport chip card. Now subscriptions holders who forget their pass card and have had to pay a fine cannot ask for their money back either. Even the Dutch Rail employees are appalled and somehow somewhere Baer Traa dressed up as a train conductor got a gig telling people ‘sorry’, or in less polite and more accurate terms, how Dutch Rail is screwing them over easy.

Traa gives ‘peddling excuses’ a whole new meaning at Amsterdam Central Station in this video. He starts singing again at 1:08, as the beginning of the video was the end of one song. He actually tries to explain that Dutch Rail has a new policy that shafts more people than even before.

(Link: brekend.nl, Photo by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

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September 5, 2014

Student takes selfies at every Dutch train station

Filed under: General,Photography by Orangemaster @ 11:40 am

Travelling after you’ve graduated is definitely a classic, but travelling around the Netherlands by train is probably not what most Dutch graduates have in mind.

Teun here took a year off to make selfies at every train station in the country, which is 400 train stations and you can watch the video of the results. Yes, it’s clearly used by Dutch Rail as a promo for student discounts with the train, but it’s still pretty cool.

For anyone who has never been to the Netherlands, there’s a nice pan of Amsterdam Central station at 1:06, followed by the very modern and quite new Rotterdam Central Station.

For the movie buffs, try and spot Haarlem Central Station, one of the oldest in the country, which was featured in a scene of Ocean’s Twelve with George Clooney on the phone.

(Link: www.froot.nl, Photo by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

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