Nederlandse Spoorwegen - Fares and Tickets

Fares and Tickets

The OV-chipkaart will become the only ticket accepted on any form of public transport in The Netherlands but during the introduction of this new system both fares paid with this chip-card as well as single or return paper tickets will exist side by side for several years. Where the chipcard is already the only accepted payment on regional bus services and urban transport in places like Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the train companies in the Netherlands still offer paper tickets as well as accepting the OV-chipkaart.

There is partly a common tariff system with four smaller passenger train operating companies — Syntus and Connexxion in the east, Veolia on the 'Maaslijn' and 'Heuvellandlijn' in the south east, Arriva in the north of the country and on the 'Merwede-Lingelijn' (from Dordrecht to Geldermalsen).

NS is encouraging people who buy traditional domestic tickets, to do that at ticket machines. They are still available at counters (planned to be developed into service centres) at larger stations for a supplement of €0.50 per ticket since June 2004.

The disadvantage of this is for foreign users, as none of the machines accept banknotes, and most also do not accept credit cards or non-SEPA debit cards (with the exception of those at Schiphol and Amsterdam Centraal).

It is also possible to buy e-tickets online on the Dutch Railways website.

During the annual Boekenweek (Bookweek), it is possible to travel for free on Sunday upon showing the Boekenweekgeschenk (Bookweekgift).

Increasingly, operators apply separate tariffs, partly related to the gradually introduced OV-chipkaart, which combines card integration with price differentiation. However, a series of new passes introduced by NS in 2011 are now also valid in trains of the other operators Arriva, Connexxion, Syntus, and Veolia.

Even so these developments require traveller awareness of the various companies, and often increase the fare for journeys requiring a change from one to another.

From December 2009, after acquiring the OV-chipkaart no regular NS ticket has to be bought anymore. Even for recharging the electronic money on the card, one can order this to be done automatically.

Travelling with the OV-chipkaart one has to register starting a journey (check in) and ending it (check out), and must always travel away from the point of one's latest check-in. Thus in the case of a voluntary detour, one has to check out and check in to register starting a new journey.