NOS News•today, 07:00
Last year, train passengers on the Arnhem-Breda line most often had to deal with a station that was skipped, according to figures that the NOS requested from the NS. Of the ten most frequently passed stations in the Netherlands, eight are on that route. Skipping a station almost always happens because a train has been delayed.
Tilburg University is the most frequently passed railway station in the Netherlands. 0.8 percent of the NS train journeys that were supposed to stop there passed before the eyes of the people on the platform. In all cases it concerns Sprinters, because Intercity trains do not stop there.
Skipping is done deliberately: the NS wants to prevent a train from being completely canceled due to the delay. “And then all travelers along the route will be affected,” says an NS spokesperson.
Nijmegen region
Tilburg University is followed on the list of most frequently passed stations by Nijmegen Dukenburg and Nijmegen Goffert. Things have been going wrong regularly in that region for some time now. In a list from more than ten years ago, the stations Arnhem Zuid, Elst and Nijmegen Lent were at the top of the list of most frequently passed stations.
The NS skips a station almost 2,800 times a year, an average of more than 7.6 times a day. This amounts to 0.02 percent of the total number of times a train has to stop and that percentage is comparable to the figures of ten years ago.
The fact that travelers between Arnhem and Tilburg are relatively often the victims is partly because the stretch between Nijmegen and Oss is slower. Over a length of 2 kilometers, only 40 kilometers per hour may be driven instead of 140 kilometers per hour.
Top 10 most skipped stations in 2023
| Station | Number of times skipped | % of number of planned stops |
| Tilburg University | 271 | 0.82% |
| Nijmegen Dukenburg | 167 | 0.41% |
| Nijmegen Goffert | 166 | 0.41% |
| Utrecht Lunetten | 101 | 0.19% |
| Arnhem South | 94 | 0.28% |
| Elst | 92 | 0.26% |
| Nijmegen Lent | 92 | 0.27% |
| Zoetermeer | 75 | 0.26% |
| Rosmalen | 69 | 0.31% |
| ‘s-Hertogenbosch East | 68 | 0.30% |
In addition, according to the NS, more freight trains are forced to use the rails in the province of North Brabant. They normally take the Betuwe route, but this is now only possible to a limited extent because the track is being worked on in Germany.
Things won’t get any better there in the short term. Next year, due to these works, much more freight transport will have to use the ‘regular’ rail. Freight trains are also less punctual than passenger trains, which means they cause delays relatively often.
More than eight minutes late
A driver does not decide on his own whether a train should continue, agreements have been made about this. In the case of Tilburg University, the station is skipped by ProRail traffic control if the Sprinter is delayed by more than eight minutes.
At the university they find it annoying that the station is regularly passed by. Rector magnificus Wim van de Donk wrote a letter to the NS at the end of last year to express his dissatisfaction about this. In a response, the transport company said that the measure will only be taken if there is absolutely no other option. Tilburg University currently has no plans to take further action.
Danger of collapse
The stations outside the Arnhem-Tilburg line that are on the list are Utrecht Lunetten and Zoetermeer. At Lunetten, Sprinters are sometimes guided along a track that does not pass a platform. There is currently no solution for this, says the NS. It has to do with an adjustment at Utrecht Central station a number of years ago to improve traffic flow there.
The fact that Zoetermeer station is on the list is because trains were not allowed to stop for a short time at the beginning of last year. The walking and cycling bridge over the railway was closed by the municipality due to the risk of collapse. Trains running on the route therefore temporarily ignored the station.
