That’s the introductory price. It’ll be €127,95 after that period is over. Kids travel for free, though, so that’s pretty nice.<p>In hindsight, I think I underestimated the value of my OV card while I was a student: travel whenever, using all types of public transport, for free.
Even at that price, the British mind cannot comprehend such good a deal. An equivalent pass in the UK would be easily 10x that to even cover just a much smaller region than The Netherlands.
For sure. I currently live in the US (fairly rural) and I would kill to have my transportation-related costs reduced to about $150/mo. But where I live, I simply need to have a car to do any basic thing since the moment I step off my driveway, there aren’t even footpaths.
I live in the Netherlands and have absolutely no need for this ticket. When I need to go somewhere, I just walk or bike there, never takes more than 20 minutes. I cannot even imagine living in American suburbia
I moved here from The Netherlands in 2004, and have now lived in Florida, California, and Mississippi and stayed for prolonged periods in many US cities for my job. I wouldn’t feel safe riding a bicycle anywhere here considering the speed of traffic, the size of the vehicles, and lack of dedicated biking infrastructure. It’s a completely different world when you share the road with angry F150 drivers blasting past you at 80 MPH. No, thank you.
I live in American suburbia and that's how I live. I can walk or bike whenever I feel like it, drive if it suits me. I sometimes wonder what the average European assumes American suburbia to be. Endless tract homes? Such places do exist, true. But that is far from universal.
I'd be curious what metropolitan area you live in for this to be true! If you're not comfortable sharing for privacy reasons, that's all right. But it seems like this is the case in inner-ring suburbs in the Northeast megalopolis.
Of course you can walk. But can you walk to your workplace, your kid’s nursery, your local bakery/supermarket, your doctor, your dentist, the pharmacy?
I already have the NS Flex free weekend subscription (with 1st class addition) and it's the only way for me to travel longer distances. It's also just about the only available public transport in the neighbourhood because I live in a polder.<p>Nearest train station is a 35 minute walk, nearest supermarkets are almost an hour walk. One advantage, before Covid and I had groceries delivered, mandatory walking back and forth three times a week to the village did wonders for losing weight.
I work with a guy from holland. There, he lived in a condo. Here, he owns 40-acers, a couple horses and is trying to grow his own corn. He can play out his rural lifestyle dreams and still work a desk in a city, something that isnt an option without personal transportation. (I would say "car", but he rides an R1 to work most days.)
Note that 128€ is the monthly price for 100% discount, but 6€ is the monthly price for 40% discount. It brings the prices of rail travel in the Netherlands from "fucking ludicrous" to just "reasonably expensive".
Nice pass. Would be perfect for my wife and I since we don't commute for work. There is something similar here in Switzerland but not as good.<p>Funny fact: there are cities here that have tried to make public transport free. But the constitution says public transport must have a "reasonable charge". It's obvious that law was created to not overcharge but the courts have ruled that it also means that there can't be no charge. So no free public transport.
having a nominal charge would probably lead to less abuse of the system, and any contribution to the upkeep/maintenance would be welcome, I'd imagine
What kind of abuse are you thinking of?
On the other hand, no charges mean you can get rid of a lot of cruft: no tickets, no gates/turnstiles, no machines, no payments, no paperwork thereof, no ticket inspectors, etc etc. So in fact having 0 charge is unequivocally better than having a residual charge.<p>In other words: charge price = cost, or don't charge at all and get funded by public revenue.
In every city I know of, the parish for public transit more than pays for the cost of collecting. Also, in every city I'm aware of, even the ones with high transit ridership (Tokyo), there is lots of room for adding more transit and getting even more people on, but money is lacking to do that.<p>I'm also aware of no place where people who use transit to consider cost one of the major barriers to using it more. The barrier, even for the poorest people, is almost always not cause, but the service just doesn't meet their needs. Which is to say most transit systems need to raise their fares a little more and use that extra money to give people the service they actually want.
My understanding of that ruling is that, the intent of the constitutional clause is not only to prevent ticket prices from being raised unfairly, but also to prevent ticket prices from being so low that they no longer cover the cost of running the network, which would shift that cost to the general taxpayer.<p>Still frustrating (if the taxpayers want it, might as well let them have it), but not purely a semantic technicality.
Public transport is not sustainable from ticket prices alone anywhere in Europe.
True for local lines of everyday transportation. But actually high speed trains are sustainable, at least in France.<p>But also they are super expensive.
That's a bold assertion.<p>Never mind that you know what's also not "sustainable", if the definition means "costs > revenues"? Automobile roads :)
Does the Swiss rail not receive public funding? It seems to me that undercharging would only necessitate <i>more</i> public funding, not some fundamental change where taxpayers suddenly have to pay for something they didn't before.
I wasn't aware of that fun fact - I always just assumed it was down to the "personal responsibility" mindset ("people must pay for what they use").<p>Have the courts also said anything about the charge being super low, e.g. like a CHF 1 per month abo or such? I wonder if that would be a way around those rulings.
That sort of begs the question about elevators and escalators. I’ve never been charged riding those, and I can’t imagine fares tacked on in Switzerland. Have they been ruled on? An elevator in a public building is very much public transport.<p>I know it’s stupid, but I’m genuinely curious now.
Presumably there would be a legal definition of what constitutes public transport, and I would expect it wouldn't include those. But I'm neither swiss nor do I speak any swiss languages so hell if I could find it.
> An elevator in a public building is very much public transport.<p>Every country defines what counts as public transport - it could be a snowmobile, a boat, or a helicopter if needed. The simple definition of "transports people in a public place" would cover a lot of funny things as public transport, like a carousel in a playground.
Free public transport routes worldwide: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_public_transport_routes" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_public_transport_...</a>
What's the largest-value coin in circulation ? Charge one of those. Drop a coin in the gumball machine, get a token.
Is this a knowing joke? Switzerland's largest (very much in both senses) coin is 5Fr, around 6 USD. Not a token amount by any means, though it wouldn't even cover most public transport journeys in cities.
The trains can still charge, but what if the government pays the tab automatically?
People who use it more really should contribute something vs those who never use it.
Personally, I find no charge very, very reasonable lol
Only valid during the two summer months. It's a rather weak simile of the German Deutschlandticket (now 58 euro/month but valid all day on bus/tram/metro and local/regional trains, but not on long distance trains, in a much larger country).
It started out as an idea to introduce the same concept as the Deutschlandticket in NL. But the government has a budget deficit and the national railway company expected a capacity issue during peak hours. As a result the ticket is only valid in off-peak hours and the low price is only for 2 months.
It's been 63 euro for some months now.
A single, non-discounted, one-way train ride between the two biggest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, costs €20,20.<p>The promotional price of this subscription is only a few euros more expensive than the existing unlimited subscription for weekend train travel (i.e. 6:30 PM Friday to 4:00 AM Monday), which costs €39,50. You can pay €4 extra for a 40% discount the rest of the off-peak hours.<p>With that discount, my commute (Haarlem <=> Amsterdam) costs €3,30 each way. A single trip to work a month makes the promotional subscription better value.
This special ticket is implemented by providing a 2-month discount on the existing 'off-peak free travel' subscription from the Dutch Railways. This was deemed the only way to quickly introduce such a product [1].<p>[1] (in Dutch) <a href="https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2026/05/22/voorstel-voor-onbeperkt-treinreizen-in-de-daluren-gedurende-de-zomer" rel="nofollow">https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2026/05/22/voors...</a>
It doesn't work on the GVB Amsterdam local trains or trams...just the NS trains.
There are some routes within Amsterdam that have NS trains paralleling GVB trains, might help save money on those.
It doesn't work on bus, metro or tram, which GVB operates, but it does work on trains from all operators, not just NS.
The off-peak hours this pass is valid: Monday to Friday from 9 am to 4 pm and 6.30 pm to 6.30 am. I wonder what happens if you start your ride 3:59 pm.
When you start a journey, the time you check in at the access gate is taken as the check-in time for your whole journey with that train company. (You may have to check-in and out if you switch trains and the train you're getting on is from a different company).<p>So if you check-in at 3.59 pm in the north of the Netherlands, and go to the south to arrive around 7.00 pm in the south of the Netherlands and you only use trains from 1 company (like NS) the whole journey will be considered off-peak hours. Even if by the time you arive in the south the peak-hours will already be over.<p>Most trains run with NS but some regional lines have Arriva (Deutsche Bahn) or Keolis (SCNF).<p>Additionally there is a 5 minute grace period in your favor, so if you check-in at 4.04 pm it will stil be off-peak.<p>And because the whole thing is rather confusing for those not already familiar with the system there you get to do it wrong once a year and get your fine waived if you call the train company.<p>And yes there's little queues just before 06.25 pm every day of people waiting in front of the check-in gates for their pass to become valid (especially on fridays when the weekend-pass will become valid).
The time of tapping in at the ticket barriers counts for the whole trip. If you get in just before the start of peak-hours, you still pay the off-peak rate for the whole trip. But if you tap in before 9am, the whole trip counts as peak-rates also the part that happens after 9am.<p>Transfer don't change it, they're all part of the same trip. Going out of a station and then back in also doesn't interrupt your trip. As far as I know you need 60 minutes of being "out" of the train system for it to be considered a new trip.
Significantly worse than the Deutschland ticket
What I don't understand about initiatives like this is... why bother charging at all? wouldn't the system be more efficient without a fare process? at that point you don't have to maintain an entire money handling system.
Not for visitors AIUI. You need some kind of card only locals can get.
Yes you need a card (ov-chipkaart or ov-pas) but you don't need to be a local to get one. You just order one online for 7.5/5 euros. You do need an address for it to be delivered to, but its valid for 5 years so if you visit the Netherlands again you can reuse it.
I think everyone can get the card, though maybe you need a dutch address to sent it to.
I mean why not, right? The trains are moving anyways.
In English: <a href="https://www.ns.nl/en/season-tickets/dal-vrij" rel="nofollow">https://www.ns.nl/en/season-tickets/dal-vrij</a>
(in Dutch)
We've updated the URL to the English-language version that CalRobert submitted. We appreciate all languages and cultures but HN is an English-language site, so we always want the English version to be submitted here, thanks!