Netherlands makes trains free on national book day for those who show a book | Hacker News Reader

Netherlands makes trains free on national book day for those who show a book

independent.co.uk

115 pointsohjeez35 comments

It's a fun tradition. We like to complain every opportunity we can about the dutch railways. But it could be a lot worse. Traveling on that Sunday by train is always fun, because it feels that with a lot of companion travels you share this love for books, creating a different atmosphere from traveling different days.

"Boekenweek" is one of the most memorable "commercial celebration" weeks for me at least, remember fun activities at libraries when I was a kid.

I don't have a lot of data points, but comparing the Dutch railway system to the one in the UK, there is a very clear winner. The trains in the Netherlands have a fixed price and are rarely delayed or cancelled.

Also, the OV-chipkaart is great - you can use the same card on trains, trams, buses and underground across the Netherlands.

This seems to be a typical thing with public services / transit. Locals will complain and find flaws no matter how good the service is. However for 95% of the western world, Dutch railways are an example of how good it could be.

The UK is also, sadly, a very low bar to compare against wrt public transport.

I used to complain about the Dutch railway system. Then I moved to the UK and realized how much better it is, not to mention cheaper and predictable pricing! None of this pre-order or "if you get a return via the same route it's 40p more expensive but if you get a return via a different route it's £40 more expensive" nonsense.[1]

I didn't travel much until a few years ago, but since then I've come to learn that the Dutch railways is probably the best I've seen yet (which doesn't necessarily mean it's the best as I can't compare all systems, but certainly seems among the best).

UK trains tend to have better service though: more power sockets (although I assume it's more common in NL too now? Haven't been in 4 years), and better catering. There's almost always coffee, and some trains even have a bar with beer/wine at comparatively reasonable prices.

Where I'm currently living in New Zealand doesn't even have a train connection, even though it sports a famous railway station :-(

[1]: See my confusion here: https://travel.stackexchange.com/q/37196/20608

Comparison with UK is going for an easy win. Dutch should compare their trains with German or Japanese trains. Then, they suck!

If you use them occasionally you think they are amazing and much better than most other networks but if you rely on them everyday then you quickly realize how bad they are. Lots of random delays and unpredictable behaviors. Smallest change in weather causes disruption. And they are actually expensive even in comparison. (I cannot find the EU report that showed that, I’ll update the comment with it)

I think the rail network just lacks redundancy. Everything is super efficient with just single track each direction but when something breaks down a replacement train (or an engine) is far away and won't fit in the busy schedule.

Also there is so little space for luggage or prams.

This has been a tradition for decades now, but the title makes it seem like a new thing. Also, as renholder already mentions, you can only travel free by train with the book you get as a present when buying a book during the yearly "book week".

The title is misleading: "A book" tends to inclinate that it's not a specific book, which is the anithesis to the fact that the Boekenweekgeschenk very much is.

Well you're not wrong, but not only is that in the article, it's literally the next line below the title.

Once you experience the US public transportation system (trams, busses.. dit I mention Caltrain?), one realizes how good the Dutch system is. Practically none of my Dutch friends have a car. I don't know any one in the bay area without at least one.

The best thing about US public transit is that it makes UK transit look good by comparison.

We love to complain about Dutch public transport because of how stupid and incompetent it frequently is, but then you look across the border and see how much worse it could be.

The specific book is: Jas Van Belofte

Which has pretty atrocious reviews on https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44283944-jas-van-belofte

I used Google translate to check that it's not brigading or something because of book week, but no, people really do seem to hate the book.

Do e-books count? I hope so, they have the same capability or even better (search), and no environmental impact

Boekenweek is organised by book stores, if you buy a book in that week you get an extra one free, the "boekenweek present". It's exclusively written for that edition boekenweek and can be used as a train ticket on sunday.

E-books have great features no doubt, but people buy them online, and traditional book stores aren't fans.

Sounds like a massive subsidy to bookstores.

Ironically, I bet people today read far more than ever, as that's how they interact with their phones.

Subsidy? I don't think there is much government money involved, except that the railways are state-owned.

I don't know specifically about the Dutch railways, but government operated utilities usually are subsidized by the taxpayers. It's certainly true in Seattle, where the government transportation network operates at massive losses made up by the taxpayers.

In the Netherlands it's a bit complicated. The rail infrastructure company (ProRail) is subsidized (just like e.g. highways), but the national railway company (NS) that runs most of the passenger trains on it actually pays for the privilege and isn't subsidized.

But this sponsorship just makes sense as marketing for them, they want to be seen as a way to travel that can be combined with reading a book, since you can't driving a car. That is not "massive subsidy".

The NS is government owned, but not government operated. They privatised and liberalised the public transport market during the neoliberal privatisation wave of the 1990s, despite trains obviously being a natural monopoly in their own market.

It later got split into the railway infrastructure (ProRail, which owns the tracks) and railway operation (NS, which runs the trains and competes to a limited extent with other train companies). NS runs at a profit, though may receive subsidies to run non-profitable lines, though other operators can also bid on those lines, and particularly in less densely populated, and therefore less profitable, parts of the country, some of these lines are run by other companies (usually either foreign owned or set up by bus companies).

Personally I think the real profit of a good public transit system should not be in money, but in public mobility. More people using the train also means less cars on the road and therefore less traffic jams. And being run for profit makes the NS care less about that aspect. For that reason, I'd prefer if they'd kept it state-operated and run specifically as an alternative to cars.

There's infrastructure involved in delivering an ebook to the customer, data centers to store them on, devices with rare metals to read them on, ... You could maybe argue (or not) that that's environmentally more friendly than pressing a book on paper and physically delivering that to a person, but 'no environmental impact' seems like a stretch.

Yes, e-books count as well.

They should give an extra day's travel if the book-holder is not carrying a smart phone.

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