New high speed line to operate between Brussels and Amsterdam

After the technical and financial debacle around Dutch rail company Fyra that ended in tensions between the Belgian national railway operator, SNCB, and its Dutch counterpart (NS), the latter has announced the opening of a new high speed line between Amsterdam and Brussels, reported news outlet L’Echo.

The Netherlands will invest 200 million euros to acquire 18 trains from the French group Alstom. The high speed line will be exploited starting in 2021, replacing the line that had been operated for a couple years after the Fyra fiasco.

Following many technical incidents and countless delays, these trains were forbidden to run in Belgium. A parliamentary inquiry was conducted in the Netherlands, which resulted in a loss of 67 millions euros for NS.

Thus, there will now exist a new competitor for the rail company Thalys on the Brussels-Amsterdam connection. Thalys remains, however, the only one to operate a high speed line between Paris and Brussels.