NETHERLANDS Railways is to restructure its senior management with effect from August 1, when Chairman Rob den Besten retires. He will be succeeded by a five-strong directorate, comprising new Chairman Hans Huisinga and directors for Commercial, Operations, Finance, and Internal & External Relations.
The Commercial sector will be responsible for marketing and sales plus the property business. Operations will group passenger unit NS Reizigers, NS Stations and the engineering group NedTrain. No decision has yet been taken on who will control NS Internationaal.
From January 1 2001 NS will hand over its infrastructure businesses to the Ministry of Transport: capacity management unit Railned, infrastructure maintenance contractor NS Railinfrabeheer, and traffic control unit NS Verkeersleiding. Ownership of all rail infrastructure will be vested in NS Railinfra Trust.
H On May 29 Railinfrabeheer unveiled its 10-year strategic plan for rail development, Concurrerend Spoor. This outlines three projections for traffic growth, network quality and investment in capacity. The base case envisages spending 33bn guilders, to cope with passenger growth of 50% and a doubling of freight traffic to 53 million tonnes. The ’budget scenario’ looks at cheaper ways of handling similar traffic, and is costed at 29bn guilders. The growth scenario envisages a 75% increase in traffic and development of a ’Metrotrein Nederland’ network offering a basic 5 min or 10 min interval service; this would cost 35bn guilders.
