Dutch government recalibrates quality standard for rail

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, Rijkswaterstaat, has now set its quality standard for the Dutch railway: Basic Quality Dutch for Railways (Basiskwaliteit Nederlands Spoor or BKN Spoor). Moving forward, Rijkswaterstaat and ProRail will make decisions regarding the maintenance and improvement of the railway based on this new standard. Demissionary State Secretary Vivianne Heijnen wrote this to the Second Chamber.

“The maintenance needs, available capacity on the railway, availability of personnel, and budgetary resources require a new balance,” writes Heijnen. “As maintenance work on the railway is expected to increase in the coming period and maintenance costs rise, choices need to be made to better align budget and performance and to increase predictability.”

According to the state secretary, adopting the quality standard Basic Quality Dutch for Railways (BKN Spoor) is necessary, according to both the state secretary and ProRail, to ensure a structurally safe and reliable railway network. “As maintenance work on the railway is expected to increase in the coming period and maintenance costs rise, choices need to be made to better align budget and performance and to increase predictability,” states Heijnen.

Taking everything into account, the state secretary foresees the following measures:

• “More Efficient Execution: Exploring possibilities for a more efficient use of personnel and capacity for work. This applies to both ProRail and its collaboration with the market. This will result, among other things, in more daytime work in the coming years and a more evenly spread-out schedule throughout the year. This aligns with a development initiated in 2017 with all parties involved in the railway to ensure the availability and reliability of the railway in the long term, making railway work more attractive during labour market shortages, and reducing maintenance costs. Nevertheless, it is expected that there may be more disruption on the railway during daytime and outside holiday periods.
• Focused Choices in Societal Ambitions and Developments: Climate-neutral and circular infrastructure projects and clean and emission-free construction are important goals in the BKN Spoor. Additional sustainability ambitions, such as greening grey surfaces and promoting biodiversity around the railway, cannot currently be included in the basic quality. Additionally, I am considering what is appropriate to include in the BKN Spoor for a development such as climate-adaptive infrastructure.
• Critical Assessment of Station Management and Maintenance: Stations in the Netherlands generally have a high level of facilities and quality. Resources for maintenance contribute to this to some extent. The stations will maintain their regular cleaning and remain accessible to everyone, but the optimal frequency of periodic structural cleaning will be reassessed. Maintenance of unused bicycle parking facilities will be scaled back.
• Critical Assessment of Switch Heating: The climate is changing, and the average number of wintry days is decreasing. Consequently, there will eventually be less need for switch heating. When replacing switch heating, careful consideration will be given to whether it is essential to maintain a reliable timetable during winter weather. This may mean that the timetable during winter weather will switch to a nationally reduced schedule earlier.”

With these measures—referred to as guidelines by Heijnen—the state secretary states that “we are providing a good basic quality for our railway infrastructure.”

Long-Term Maintenance

Furthermore, a plan is being developed for the longer term. “In the coming period, together with ProRail, I will examine how the efficiency of long-term maintenance (from 2030 onwards) can be further improved along several lines of thought,” says Heijnen. The following aspects will be scrutinised:

• “Firstly, we will investigate how differentiation in the network can contribute to lower maintenance costs. Differentiation in the network means that within the space provided by TEN-T, different requirements are placed on railway assets depending on their use. Military mobility requirements for the network will also be taken into account.
• We will also explore the opportunities for efficiency through digitization. The transition to 5G on trains, for example, could lead to fewer cables and pipes around the railway, making future maintenance simpler and cheaper.
• Additionally, we will investigate whether and how stations can be more standardised in the future. This saves on construction costs but also means that future station maintenance will be designed to be as efficient as possible.
• Finally, we will examine the effects of a possible maintenance approach where a section of track is taken out of service for a longer period and a wider variety of work is carried out during that time, allowing the track to remain out of service for a much longer period afterwards.”

According to the parties involved, the reassessment was necessary because the maintenance task is larger than initially thought and the costs are higher than hoped. “In the coalition agreement of the current government, additional resources have been structurally allocated to the maintenance of our networks, 1.5 billion euros per year,” writes Heijnen. “With the additional resources from the coalition agreement, more maintenance and renovation of the railway will be realised. As the maintenance task is increasing at the same time, I want to ensure that these resources are used as effectively as possible. That is why I reassess and validate railway maintenance costs every four years. The latest reassessment shows that railway maintenance costs will be higher in the coming years and will increase more than estimated a few years ago during the previous reassessment.”

“Affordability and feasibility of our railway network are a challenge with all of this. Choices need to be made to keep the task and the budget in balance for the long term as well. Decision-making on this is necessary so that ProRail has clarity about the frameworks for the multi-year work programming before the summer. Such multi-year programming offers predictability for all parties involved and also provides opportunities for more efficient work. Given the demissionary status of the cabinet, there is a need to provide clarity to ProRail to prevent necessary railway maintenance or renewal from being halted.”

‘Addressing backlogged maintenance in the Port of Rotterdam’

According to Heijnen, the BKN Spoor “stands for a stable, long-term, and robust maintenance level of the Dutch railway, as has been developed for the Rijkswaterstaat networks. The approach followed in establishing the BKN Spoor is comparable to the basic quality level for the RWS networks. As with the RWS networks, the starting point for the BKN Spoor is an efficient and sustainable maintenance effort that is feasible and achievable and fits within the available budgets, while ensuring a structurally safe and reliable railway network. Thus, the BKN Spoor provides long-term clarity about basic quality across the country and creates predictability for ProRail, contractors, and carriers.”

If the basic quality of the railway is not ensured, there is a risk that transportation performance will become unpredictable and decrease. “I want to prevent this as much as possible,” writes Heijnen, adding that there is “little unplanned deferred or backlogged maintenance on the Dutch railway. The Rotterdam harbour area, which is used by many freight carriers, is an important exception to this. My goal is to address backlogged maintenance in the Rotterdam harbour and prevent unplanned deferred maintenance from occurring in the future.”

This article was first published in Dutch by our sister publication SpoorPro.

Further reading:

• ProRail: ‘More than 400 rail projects in 2024’
• Brussels does not accept the main rail network concession for NS
• The Dutch rail sector no longer wants to bear the costs of sustainability alone