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I disagree. Lots of small towns have excellent train and bus connections. The idea that proper public transport only exists in and around Amsterdam is preposter

I disagree. Lots of small towns have excellent train and bus connections. The idea that proper public transport only exists in and around Amsterdam is preposterous and, well, simply not true. I agree that service to real small towns has gotten worse, and I agree that that’s stupid. But a large share of NL’s 400 train stations are in small towns too. Bus service to Tynaarlo going to shit does not mean that “public transportation time distance” is a useless, or “Amsterdam-centric” measure.

berkes 3y ago
Service in small towns and villages has become worse (thanks to decades of free-market-politics). I live in such a village. But that, indeed, does not mean that public transport is bad. It's still very good. Just less good for a minority. My situation is that I always need (2x) extra 25 minutes on bike before I can hop on a train. A car hardly increases that speed. A taxi might be faster (due not having to park), but they are (always have been market-driven) unpredictable: they don't like driving to/from a small village. I often need "last-leg" journeys in remote areas too. Dutch public transport has excellent bike-services. I'll just grab a bike (OV-fiets) at the train-station and cycle to where I have to be. Sure, over 30-minutes makes the entire journey longer than car. But 25 mins bike + train@150km/h + 30 mins bike is most often still faster than a car. And I can drink a beer, code some stuff or watch a netflix on the train. And have 1:50m of light workout under the belt. Point being: maybe it's getting less-good. And it's good that people complain about that (if only they voted like this too). But most often this complaint is really little more than repeated hearsay; a pretext to keep driving in a car.