NS provides sustainable mobility to more than 9 million passengers in the Netherlands every year, which is its contribution to the economic development and accessibility of the cities and the regions, as well as to achieving Dutch climate objectives. The annual report tells you about the ways we are creating value for society in the Netherlands. The value creation model at the end of this section shows the social, economic and environmental resources we use, the value NS adds to them and what that then yields for society.

Input

To let our business model function as well as possible, we need some key inputs. As a carrier, we could not for instance function without our people and their knowledge of logistics. But other aspects are important too, such as energy (e.g. from wind) for powering our trains.

Business model

Our current Spoorslags Beter (‘Improving the fast track’) strategy gives passengers top priority. In addition, we have the objective of improving sustainable mobility in the Netherlands while at the same time running sound business operations. NS focuses on three core tasks: providing a good train journey, world-class stations, and improving the door-to-door journey by letting passengers control their own journeys. This is our contribution to affordable and sustainable mobility in the Netherlands.

Output

The activities in our business model have a variety of internal and external outcomes. For example, in addition to our financial results, we handle over 1.3 million train journeys a day in the Netherlands, we take good care of our staff and our trains almost always run on time.

Our impact

We have a major impact on our surroundings. Mobility is very beneficial to the Netherlands in economic and social terms. But customers also lose journey time when there are delays and we do have a negative environmental impact because of the raw materials we use. If we are to be able to keep people travelling in future and keep the Netherlands mobile, it is important for us to have insights into the effects our business model has on society and to keep using them as control parameters. We know, for instance, that the social costs of a train journey remain less than for a car journey; where the environment or safety are involved, we will be able to increase our social return by increasing our share in overall mobility growth.