Railway punctuality conference: Learning from Japan at the Dutch railways

Didier van de Velde spoke at a conference on best international practices of railway punctuality (“Colloque sur les meilleures pratiques internationales de la ponctualité ferroviaire“) organised on 2 March 2017 in Paris (La Défense) by the French Authority on Quality in Transport Services (AQST).

AQST invited Didier to present his paper on the Japanisation of the Dutch Railways (2011-2013) at this conference organised upon the request of the French Secretary of State for Transport in order to identify best management practices for a higher railway punctuality in France and Europe. Other presenters were SNCF (FR), Passenger Focus (GB), Trafikverket (SE) and SBB (CH). Two round tables were held with various stakeholders.

Didier started his presentation by explaining the current governance of the Dutch railway system and summarising the findings from his earlier papers on the “Japanisation of the Dutch Railways”. After that he showed that in the meantime most of the Japanese lessons drawn at the time by the Dutch railway managers who had participated to the exchanges with Japan have been implemented. He illustrated this by comparing some Japanese and Dutch examples. He also made the link with the actions taken by the “Better and More” NS/ProRail joint improvement programme.