NS withdrew an average of 12.4% of the trains for maintenance, repairs and refurbishment on any given day in 2018 (11.4% in 2017). This means that we performed better than the norm of 13.3% per annum and that we met the target that is needed for the timetable. The main reasons for the increase were the additional withdrawals for upgrading the rolling stock and making further improvements in rolling stock performances. We are working on further lowering this percentage in order to increase the number of seats for passengers.

Real-time monitoring

NS measures the conditions of the rolling stock with sensors in the train. This way we can immediately see how the train is doing, for example whether there is an impending fault or whether a train has to go to a maintenance location for restoration work. Because we can look in real-time, the driver can also get better and faster advice if there is a fault and thus limit the delay. Last year, NS implemented technical real-time monitoring for the first train series; from 2019 onwards we will start using it, and more train series will follow. This covers over 350 existing trains and all new rolling stock that comes in.