Trains which are up to five minutes late arriving at their destination are to be considered on time under new Dutch Rail (NS) guidelines, the Volkskrant reports on Tuesday.

‘This new punctuality limit puts us in line with the rest of Europe, where the five-minute standard is pretty well the norm,’ NS director Bert Meerstadt told the paper.
Meerstadt said this did not mean that passengers would experience more delays. And NS had a target of 93% of trains meeting the five minute target. Currently 87% of trains arrive within five minutes of their formal arrival time, the paper said.
The NS is also to take how many passengers a train is carrying into its punctuality figures.
Public transport users lobby group Rover is opposed to the new deadline. ‘Two minutes are nothing if you are going from A to B. But they do count if you have to change trains and miss a connection,’ chairman Michael van der Vlis told the paper.