From Amsterdam to Groningen

Amsterdam is the number one tourist city of the Netherlands for both the Dutch and foreigners. The 10.197.000 foreigners staying over in Amsterdam in 2014[1] support this claim. Moreover, Amsterdam is also in possession of the Netherlands’ most important airport, Schiphol. Thus, enough reason to research the accessibility of the way from Amsterdam to Groningen (perhaps to provide an extra incentive for people to follow the same road as me).

Accessibility and tourism are two closely interrelated concepts. If the places tourists are willing to visit are not accessible, what is left of tourism? Alison McIntosh, one of the scholars studying this topic, has focused attention on the problems tourists with disabilities encounter when travelling around the globe. These disabilities can vary from all sorts of restrictions. One can think of a visual impairment, but also people travelling with young children, elderly people or people with mental health problems. Studies have shown that not enough attention is paid to this group of travellers. For example, in air travel people with a disability are discriminated on regular basis, when their wheelchair is taken away from them in an aircraft, which leaves them without an independent way to move and may give them a ‘disembodied experience’ due to the taking away of an object vital to their way of life.[2]

Wednesday the 27^th of January, I took the train from Amsterdam Central to Groningen Station at 15.31 pm. This train ride would take 2 hours and 13 minutes. At Amsterdam Central, I first had to check in by scanning my OV-card. Luckily, in Amsterdam, they do not have gateways, which made the station quite accessible. When I tried to enter the platform, there were stairs, but there was also an elevator available. The train itself, however, was quite hard to access, due to the fact that the only way to get in was by climbing small steps. This makes it impossible for people with a physical disability to enter the train without help. The Dutch Railways company (NS) does provide ‘travel assistants’[3] (which are normally conductors) for people with a disability. If this is not enough, there is a special free-of-charge OV-card for people with a personal travel companion[4]. However, this is not a solution for the very short time (2 minutes!) given between switching trains at station Amersfoort in order to get to Groningen. There are other tracks which will take you to Groningen and include more time for switching trains, but I must conclude not all tracks are accessible.

Thus, while the NS is certainly trying its best to make taking the train accessible, it can still focus on the improvement of independent travelling for people with a disability, so that accessing a train or a station does not directly mean a need for travel assistance.

-  Tessa

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[1] "Onderzoek, informatie, statistiek," Gemeente Amsterdam, accessed January 5, 2016, http://www.ois.amsterdam.nl/visualisatie/dashboard_toerisme.html

[2] Simon Darcy, "(Dis)Embodied Air Travel Experiences: Disability, Discrimination and the Affect of a Discontinuous Air Travel Chain," Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 19 (2012): 1-11, accessed January 5, 2016, https://nestor.rug.nl/bbcswebdav/pid-7579234-dt-content-rid-7570815_2/courses/HCRWB0405.2015-2016.1B/Reading%203%20Disembodied%20air%20travel%20experiences.pdf

[3] "Hulp bij reizen met een functiebeperking," NS, accessed January 29, 2016, https://avg.ns.nl/#begeleiding

[4] "OV-begeleiderskaart," Argonaut Advies, accessed January 29, 2016, www.ov-begeleiderskaart.nl