(Editor’s note: This post on the travel crisis in the Netherlands contains the opinions and observations of the author. This post was updated on 8 January 2026.)
For us Americans used to snow and cold, it’s baffling that the Netherlands at 54 degrees north latitude, roughly the same as Juneau, Alaska, has no real plan for dealing with snow and freezing temperatures. Yet trains don’t run and planes don’t fly. The entire country is shut down as I write this.
This is not a good thing for millions of people here, including my daughter Lale, who depend on public transportation to get to work.
Just checked today’s email alert from the NS, the Netherland’s national train service, and there’s no change:
This morning (7 January), NS train services were unavailable throughout the Netherlands. This was due to a combination of numerous switch failures and an additional IT outage. We understand that this has caused significant inconvenience and are very sorry for our passengers.
On 8 January, the NS announced it’s going to a winter schedule for the forseable future, with fewer trains.
In its defense, the Netherlands has the busiest rail network in the European Union and the most complex, as the NS constantly reminds us. But ineptitude (Switch failures? Seriously?) is not a winning excuse for public-facing transportation operations.
The question is, is this paralysis symptomatic of deeper issues in a society that’s one of world’s wealthiest and more advanced?
It isn’t just arrogant Americans saying this … go on any social media platform and you can read the posts of mystified Europeans and, yes, even the Dutch.
Rotterdam-based entrepreneur/investor Albert Dallau posted this on LinkedIn:
I should have been back in the Netherlands by now, but travel through our core infrastructure has again become impossible. The failures at Schiphol, KLM and the recurring disruptions around NS and ProRail, are no longer “incidents”. They mirror a wider pattern in Dutch governance: fragmented accountability, underinvestment in capability and outcomes treated as optional. The refrain is familiar: “We did our best.”
Fabrizio Del Matteo, Eindhoven-based founder of Axelera AI, posted on LinkedIn about his trip to Las Vegas for CES falling apart in real time, starting with the train to Schiphol Airport. “Will I ever arrive in Vegas ?? Who knows…definitely not by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines 😉…”
A crisis? Or the norm?
On Monday, 5 January, transportation across the Netherlands ground to a halt after what apparently qualifies as a “snow storm” if you’re at NS, or KLM, the Franco-Dutch airline. NS issued a warning that more snow and disruptions were coming and that service would be minimal. Which turned out be a huge understatement.
On Tuesday morning, there was not a train running across the entire country. Not until mid-morning did the train network go to a winter timetable. Same for Wednesday morning. Delays. Fewer trains. More transfers and crowded trains. At the heart of the problem were fears that switching equipment would freeze up. But the techs from maintenance provider ProRail couldn’t get to work because, well, trains aren’t running.
At Schiphol Airport, they cancelled 350 flights on Tuesday morning, then 800 on Wednesday morning. Why? Because of deicing and the fact that pilots and flight crews were overclocking the permissible number of work hours. On Tuiesday, KLM actually ran out of de-icing fluid and had to get some from Germany. I will give them an A for transparency and not resorting to the old “mistakes were made” excuses.
Things got so bad that Schiphol officials set up cots for the 1,000 people stuck at the airport.
Here in our headquarters of Eindhoven, there might be four inches (10 centimeters) of snow on the ground. That’s a lot of snow in, say, Miami. But in Northern Europe, that shouldn’t cause the travel apocalypse.
‘What more could we have done?’
I think Albert Dallau nailed it with his brutally honest appraisal that “what’s breaking isn’t crisis; it’s the absence of urgency. Incrementalism is no longer enough.” People, he wrote, should not be rewarded or paid simply for ‘doing their best’ when results are not delivered. Public trust, budgets, and leadership credibility require performance that is measurable in the real world!”
This truth is with a high standard of living, decades of compound interest off centuries of global domination and an estimated $73,000-plus GDP per capita, the Dutch are comfortable, from the C-suites and government officials to front-line workers. The willingness to work late and weekends disappeared decades ago. One startup we worked with passed on an expense-paid trip to an accelerator in The Valley because it would have cut into their summer vacation. When they tanked a few years later, one founder looked me in the eye and said, “What more could we have done?” I dunno … maybe worked more than four hours per day, three days per week? Maybe skipped out on a couple of those money-wasting boondoggle trips to irrelevant startup events?
The bad news for Dutch people is actually good news for expats. I mean, someone has to do the work. I think it’s a reasonable quid pro quo. The Americans, the Indians, Iranians and people from the Middle East and Africa – people from broken societies – get an opportunity to work and integrate into a high functioning society that does work. Well, most of the time.
As the Americans say, “win-win.”
This is the best story we read in the Dutch press about the snow: “A few snowflakes and everything will be at a standstill: foreigners in Eindhoven don’t understand our rail drama.”
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Read more about the Netherlands here in Dispatches’ archives.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
