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Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month
- felipevb 4mo ago(in Dutch)
- tomhow 4mo agoWe'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!
- CalRobert 4mo agoIn English: https://www.ns.nl/en/season-tickets/dal-vrij https://www.ns.nl/en/season-tickets/dal-vrij
- tomhow 4mo agoWe updated the link, many thanks!
- netule 4mo agoThat’s the introductory price. It’ll be €127,95 after that period is over. Kids travel for free, though, so that’s pretty nice. 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.
- muyuu 4mo agoEven 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.
- netule 4mo agoFor 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.
- usrnm 4mo agoI 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
- netule 4mo agoI 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.
- joe_mamba 4mo ago[flagged]
- netule 4mo agoAnd? What's the gotcha you're implying?
- vel0city 4mo agoThat you clearly value other things the US offers over the transit situation. If the transit matters that much, making the US such an unlivable hellscape, why stay? I think that's probably the point they're trying to make. IMO that doesn't mean we shouldn't bother to make the transit better, but some people think its somehow related. A lot of people think the "success" of the US is strongly correlated to this suburbia design somehow.
- andrepd 4mo agoNote 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".
- Gys 4mo agoTry Switzerland
- hfsh 4mo ago100% discount outside of peak hours. That's a small, but quite important difference. Actual 100% discount is €399,95/month.
- CalRobert 4mo agoKids under 12 free, too. I don't look forward to having to pay for both of them. Utrecht to Amsterdam round trip for a family of 4 is €80 for a family of 4, or €48 with the discount.
- CalRobert 4mo agooops, "full fare" replaces one of those "family of 4"
- gib444 4mo ago> It brings the prices of rail travel in the Netherlands from "fucking ludicrous" Haha I can't help but feel the Dutch firmly believe rail should be completely free Isn't it fairly common for your employer to pay half to all of your commuting cost too...? (Almost unheard of in the UK for comparison, with people regularly paying £2,000-£10,000/year to commute) And the Netherlands is like 10th in Europe for on-the-day return costs per km https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023/01/09/rail-fares-across-europe-the-countries-with-the-most-expensive-train-tickets https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023/01/09/rail-fares-across... Though to be fare I think it's some shorter journeys that are quite expensive right? Eg Utrecht to Amsterdam is 20 EUR return which is pricey. But paying €6/mo to save 40% seems a pretty good deal if you travel a lot off peak
- gib444 4mo agoNot for visitors AIUI. You need some kind of card only locals can get.
- orrito 4mo agoI think everyone can get the card, though maybe you need a dutch address to sent it to.
- netllama 4mo agoNo, you need a dutch bank account to pay plus a dutch address to receive the card. That's not going to work for 99% of visitors.
- crote 4mo agoThe "Dutch bank account" part is almost certainly illegal, by the way. Due to EU regulations they are required to accept any European bank account. It's called "IBAN discrimination", and the national central bank has a form[0] to let them known about it. [0]: https://www.dnb.nl/betalen/hoe-werkt-betalen/sepa-en-iban-discriminatie/iban-discriminatie/ https://www.dnb.nl/betalen/hoe-werkt-betalen/sepa-en-iban-di...
- NoahZuniga 4mo agoYes 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.
- CalRobert 4mo agoTime, too - they print a card with your photo on it and it takes a couple weeks to show up.
- NoahZuniga 4mo ago
- gpvos 4mo agoOnly 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).
- macleginn 4mo agoIt's been 63 euro for some months now.
- t0mas88 4mo agoIt 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.
- gpvos 4mo agoand the bus companies didn't want to play ball.
- comrade1234 4mo agoNice 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. 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.
- test1235 4mo agohaving 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
- AndrewDucker 4mo agoWhat kind of abuse are you thinking of?
- pocksuppet 4mo agoi've seen this argument before, normally they're talking about homeless people sleeping on trains or in stations
- asdff 4mo agoAlways funny to me how people try and put laws on things for homeless people when the ills people are worried about with homeless people are already illegal but not being enforced. E.g., "we must charge for transit, to keep homeless people off as they could smoke meth on the platform." Never mind smoking meth on the platform is already illegal. Never mind that it isn't getting enforced. Never mind that this lack of enforcement on meth usage suggests farebox enforcement isn't going to suddenly out prioritize meth usage enforcement and be successful to combat meth usage in some round a bout way. It ends up being about the optics of politicians getting to advertise that they are doing "something" and never mind if it works or not, because the people clamoring the loudest, angry suburban whites usually, aren't even the ones using these systems to begin with. They are told in their propaganda bubbles that these systems are dangerous rather than experiencing it with their own eyes and making any conclusion. They demand action for a system they will never use. After whatever action passes they don't become users either, the goalposts move to some other slight or ill that is really a proxy for "I don't feel safe around black or brown people."
- micromacrofoot 4mo agoWhat 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.
- dewey 4mo ago"money handling system" scales quite well, and more money is good to have if it's affordable enough for many people?
- micromacrofoot 4mo agobut wouldn't the whole system be cheaper if it were paid for by taxes? because at that point you don't have to maintain a point of sale? hundreds of fare boxes, communication systems, physical barriers, auditing, accounting, printing cards, employees to maintain and operate it all... you even save a little time it takes tapping a card to get people on the tax system is also progressive, so the people who are most capable of paying pay the most and the poor truly pay nothing charging for a public system seems like pure waste
- eigenspace 4mo agoNo, it's not even close. Those fares don't cover the whole operation of the train system, but they actually go a long way to covering a very large chunk of it. The cost of operating the fare system is a rounding error relative to the sums of money talked about here.
- micromacrofoot 4mo agook, but hear me out let's say the fare system costs $1 million to operate and maintain and let's say the fare system collects $10 million in fares couldn't you just collect $10 million in additional taxes, just add a "railway fare" line item, and save everyone the $1 million?
- sanbor 4mo agoThe 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.
- t0mas88 4mo agoThe 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. 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.
- swongel 4mo agoWhen 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). 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. Most trains run with NS but some regional lines have Arriva (Deutsche Bahn) or Keolis (SCNF). 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. 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. 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).
- bowsamic 4mo agoSignificantly worse than the Deutschland ticket
- gib444 4mo agoDutch trains run mostly on time though and with far less disruption than DB, right?
- pell 4mo agoThe Netherlands runs around 3000 trains a day vs. 50k in Germany. That doesn't excuse Germany's problems which were also predicted years in advance when they stopped investing in maintenance and infrastructure but also shows that the comparison is not entirely fair.
- eigenspace 4mo agoReally depends on where you are in Germany. Overall, DB Regio (the regional trains which are covered by the Deutschlandticket) has around a 89% punctuality score[1], which is very comparable to the Dutch numbers. There are certain hotspot regions though where the regional trains are truly fucked, but for most of the country they're totally fine and quite reliable. It's mostly Germany's long-distance high-speed ICE trains which have punctuality problems (the much discussed 60% punctuality [2] score), but those are not covered by the Deutschland ticket, and the Netherlands has no comparable service to these trains anyways, so if one is envious of the state of Dutch trains, they can happily pretend that German ICE trains simply don't exist. In my experience though, the ICE's are a pleasure to ride. _____________________________ [1] https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lagebericht/entwicklung-der-geschaeftsfelder/geschaeftsfeld-db-regio/entwicklung-im-berichtsjahr/ https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lage... [2] https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lagebericht/entwicklung-der-geschaeftsfelder/geschaeftsfeld-db-fernverkehr/entwicklung-im-berichtsjahr/ https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lage... Sidenote, but the ICE punctuality score is not really directly comparable with the Regional train scores, since they measure different things. The ICE score is about the passenger arriving at their final destination with less than a 15 minute delay including connections, whereas with the regional trains they don't have granular passenger level data, so they measure whether or not a train gets to the platform within 6 minutes of the scheduled time.
- sleepytimetea 4mo agoIt 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.
- jorams 4mo agoIt doesn't work on bus, metro or tram, which GVB operates, but it does work on trains from all operators, not just NS.
- mfex 4mo agoThis 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]. [1] (in Dutch) https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2026/05/22/voorstel-voor-onbeperkt-treinreizen-in-de-daluren-gedurende-de-zomer https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2026/05/22/voors...
- johnnyApplePRNG 4mo agoI mean why not, right? The trains are moving anyways.
- ecedeno 4mo agoA single, non-discounted, one-way train ride between the two biggest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, costs €20,20. 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. 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.
- joegibbs 4mo agoAs an Australian, why are European train prices so high? Obviously it's due to a lack of subsidies, but why are they not subsidised? For instance, a train from London to Edinburgh (about 4 hours) is about $120 while an equivalent trip in Australia (Melbourne to Albury) is about $10 (it used to be about $40, but that's still much cheaper). Sydney to Melbourne is 900 kilometers and $80, Berlin to Paris is minimum $172. Is there very little competition from cars and planes?
- lava_pidgeon 4mo agoRailway is national and cross border is always expensive. For a similar distance you can check Hamburg - Munich. Europe is too poor to subsidiase long travel trains :p EU policy is more to introduce more competitions into the system / partly privatise it (like it works in Italy)
- brnt 4mo agoHSR in France, Italy, Spain can be very cheap. Also, they have generous discounts for 'young people' (up to 30 I think) and 60+. Living in NL, I have fond memories of the kind of travel enabled by Ouigo when I lived in FR.
- cryptopian 4mo agoAnother reason is that these routes operate an airfare model where all tickets are for a specific seat on a specific service, with increasing prices as the seats sell out. It allows for more efficient train loading, with the downside that you can't turn up to the station and assume you can take the next train.
- brnt 4mo agoHSR is more towards airfare than metro-like train services though. The latter which is basically the Dutch rail situation: it's more of a national metro service than a method for voyaging. The fact that 95% of all travels are commuters underlines this. Now I know some commute on the TGV, but the airfare model works really well for a lot of people, and I think it makes sense for longer journeys. Alas, the Netherlands doesn't have any (national) long journeys. That said, Dutch rail has a discount system in off-hours now, where you can get sizeable good discounts if you book a few days in advance. You get a ticked valid not for a specific train, but a 4-6 hour timeslot.
- souberlaf 4mo agoPlease, this is the dutch government, who believes or trust them still? The price will be raised to 200 euro and they will make it sound like it's a good thing for you. There is this weird propoganda thing about the netherlands, where it looks like this amazing utopia from the outside, but, it's far from it. Look at the housing crisis, the immigration crisis, the incredibly stupid tax on unrealized gains, the cost of living, and the list just continues.
- throw-the-towel 3mo agoBut then again, which Western country is not having a housing crisis, an immigration crisis and a ballooning cost of living.