Rating every transit system I have been on so far [Multiple European transit systems, Netherlands/Belgium/Romania]

Systems featured:

The Netherlands: NS, RET, GVB, U-OV, HTM, BRAVO, RRReis

Romania: CFR, Bucharest, Arad, Timisoara

Belgium: NMBS, Antwerpen, Brussel

1. NS- Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Dutch national regional and intercity rail. 8/10

The NS system is really good, high frequency even for most routes at 30 minutes an hour, with higher frequencies where demand needs it such as every 10 minutes from Dordrecht to Den Haag HS/Centraal (soon every 7.5 minutes) and every 5 mins from Schipol to Amsterdam

The multiple sprinter stops inside cities is also quite good, making it almost like an RER system, with good bike parking usually, problem is that outside of that it usually just goes from City centre to city centre, which means you are dependent on the transit system of the city you are arriving to, which is fine in the Randstad, but a bit trickier if you are going to let's say Eindhoven where your only option are busses in a very badly designed bus station.

Despite it's pretty high reliability, it has its downsides. Very expensive; from Eindhoven i could take a 25 euro ticket to Amsterdam or The Hague or I could take a 20 euro Flight to London. The windows are always dirty; outside the FLIRT trains, all other sprinter trains have uncomfortable steats, they don't have enough trains to run to accomodate the high demand, there are not enough trains on high demand routes like Eindhoven-Rotterdam, lots of stations have sort of bad design (the tracks around Eindhoven centraal go sort of directly into freight tracks and you always have to go through lots of slow turnovers to get to the actual station, which are noisy and slow, same for Den Bosch and lots others. Some inefficient operations like the sprinter from Eindhoven to Den Bosch sits at Den Bosch for ~26 minutes, you might as well drive it all the way to Den Bosch Oost or Rosmalen and make a siding there, more service and would sitll have turnaround free time.

Good but could be better. There is a lack of train routes outside of the Randstad as well with few plans to build new lines. Should receive subsidies from the government and they should be allowed to use station store revenue to subsideze tickets.

2. GVB - Amsterdam: 6/10

First thing first, god the Trams design are horrible. 5 part trams with lots of transverse seating, only 2 entry doors with one of the 5 parts filled with a big tourist cabin booth and nothing else. Aditionally Leidsestraat you have 3 tram lines on 10 min frequencies interlining on 3 pieces of gauntlet track. I love gauntlet track but interlining 3 liens there on a pedestrian heavy area is too much.

The metro is okay, it mostly follows the highway, Has good flyovers but stupid laws that limit the tunnel capacity for little to no reason. Way too small of a network for a city of this size with the travel demand it has. They really should extend the South-North line more into Noord, perhaps Zaandam, maybe with multiple branches.

The busses are okay but they have way too winding routes, They do feed into the metro and train stations but they have lots of stops close by one another and take very long routes.

3.RET - Rotterdam 7/10

Pretty good network, metro interiors are quite mediocre if not bad, decennt coverage but needs more expansion and possibly express services. For example the Den Haag -Slinge service could be extended to run express to De akkers, and the De akkets to Centraal line could be extended to run Express to Den Haag Centraal. line A could also be extended to run express to Maasluis Centrum.

Alternatively they could expand from Slinge to Barendrecht to connect to that regional train station, would improve a lot connectivity to Barendrecht, tho I could see people protesting being more connected to Rotterdam Zuid.

The trams are quite nice, but the tram routes are too winding, for example Tram 5 from Centraal to Barendrecht could be split up in 2 routes and with a bit more track could be rerouted ot feed intro metro station Slinge, Barendrecht-Slinge and Slinge to Noord Island to Centraal. Bus routes are too winding as well and stations are too close together

4. Bucharest STB 8/10
   Metro is pretty good, nice train stations, low frequencies (tho this is mostly cause by the 2020 M5 lines having to use older Bombardier Movia trains because the new Alstom Metorpolis trains have been delayed for 3 years as they arrived with very bad quality from Brasil, with news of emergency stop buttons not working even as of 3 weeks ago. The Alstom Coradia Stream trains in the netherlands still have lots of problems iwth software and doors, causing frequenct breakdowns. What is going on with Alstom, I really do not know.

Recently they extended the M2 line by 1.5 kms with one new P+R station, with an 50 million euro budget, finishing work 2 months faster than expected and not going over budget which is admirable, but the metro system still lacks breadth, and they are too obsessed with BMI tunelling even though the routes mostly follow wide arterial roads, they really should have more elevated branches, easy example they can extend M2 from Piata Sudului to Popesti Leordeni following hte arterial road. Another easy one would be extending M4 to go to Distor, Currently it goes from subrubian area to the main train station, but if it went one station over to Piata Victoriei it would itnerchange with the most important line M2, if you live along hte M4 you have to take lots of interchanges.

The trams are okay, they are not separated enough from car traffic enough, too many old trams still running. The trolleybuses are okay but the infrastructure is too old allowing only slow speeds. The busses are okay but there is too much bunching. All that said the metro has an very high reliability rate thanks to being mostly underground and fully grade separated, which is why it gets a higher rating than Rotterdam

5. Brussel 8/10.

Even though the metro is just 2 metro lines disguised as 4, with one being a shorter version (Elizabeth-Simonis) of the other and lines 1 and 5 being the same metro line that just split into branches for a few stations, with a tunnel for 2 tram routes, and a regional train system with patethic frequency, It is still just a really good transit system. It is quite expensive but the coverage is just so good, the trams and busses are really fast, the stations are pretty well designed, there are lots of S-Trein regional station to get you to where you want that are included in the day pass. I felt a bit crazy at metro stations with how many homeless people were sleeping in the stations but it was fine, they need to take care of those people tho

6: Antwerpen 7/10

Okay network, pretty good coverage, nice bus routes but way too low frequency on the trams, and the underground tram stations are confusing to navigate, the escalators never work, and to exit them you need to walk way too much. Expensive to use as well, 3 euros for 60 minutes, they are better off doing distance based pricing with how long their network is. The service regional rail service between Brussel and Antwerpen is very lackluster tho, way too low frequency for the high demand, it's like they hate money.

7:Arad 8/10
Arad is an 140k pop city in Romania with 100 km of tram track with 13 tram lines, with lots of newly built trams in it's fleet, locally, in the same city with Siemens bogies. genuinelyl a really great network for it's size, with trams running mostly among wide medians, even intercity to villages with tram stops with free wifi and shelter, departure screens almost everywhere, articulated and normal busses running where the tram doesn't, they even run one line to an industrial terain 2x per day only for one guy to get on (I got on that line specificqally and spoke with the driver, was funny). Downsides is that lots of switches are still manual, and lots of track needs maintenance, but they are gradually working on it replacing sections of track. I will give it some slack, just cause it is such a goed network for a city this size, in the city centre you can catch a tram every 2 minutes or sometimes even less

8.Budapest 8/10.

Nice metro coverage, good speed, and the busses are pretty good. took the express bus to the Airport and it was really fast, with its own bay. Wayfinding to the bus stop was a bit confusing but other than that pretty good network. The long trams were a deelight to watch passing me by

9.HTM - The Hague 9/10

Very good tram network, running some of the lines underground under Centruum to the central train station, then continuing elevated, with the lines 3 and 4 to Zoetermeer being fully grade separated (which funnily enough the regional train to that city is not)

Even the part of the lines that run at grade run in medians or on the side on grassy tram tracks, they have transit signal priority, it just is a really good network. It would be a 10/10 if it had either express service from East to West or a sprinter train service. I cannot sing it's praises enough. Without many track switches they even run an express service from Den Haag HS to the Scheveningen beach with only one intermediate stop, tkaing advantage msotly of good scheduling. Top system

10: Timisoara - 7/10

Pretty okay tram service, most of the network runs along medians tho sadly it get stuck in traffic in some parts, and is often not on time. Despite that the trams are long, modern and pretty comfortable. The rails are in pretty bad condition so they cannot run at max speed, and there is no signal priority.

Instead the highlight here are the busses, which run mostly electric articulated busses that are quieter and faster than the trams, with pretty decent frequency (ex line 33 usually has an 10 minute frequency, going down to 7 minutes for the rush hour) and a good amount of interlining on top of that, with a nice trolleybus network with newly bought vehicles as well

11.Arnehm 10/10

Peak Trolleybus systems, with well designed roads, lots of buslanes separated from normal car lanes, 4 bay bus station with bypass road inbetween, the trolleybuses can go on battery as well, are articulated, and super comfortable, good amount of regional train stations as well with good bus routes all around. Truly it's just a peak system for a city this size, very fast and efficient as well. Could use a few more regional rail stops not going to lie, but still just top, very solid system

12.NMBS Belgian regional and intercity rail 6/10.

Buying tickets is just miserable, whether it be online, in the app, or in real life at ticket machines, you cannot just pay with debit card, the trains are super old and not too comfortable, the train frequencies are low in the cities, the trains crawl super slowly along, especially around Brussel Noord to Zuid. Across the country they have good network breadth but it feels like lots of stations are way outside of the towns, as if the local goverments are alergic to zoning close to the stations

13. CFR Romanian Regional and intercity rail 3/10

Good points it is decently priced, i took a 20 euro 500 km ride from Bucharest to Arad, but the rolling stock is honestly so bad, outside of the new Alstom Coradia Streams they purchased. lots of track is single track, with train stations mostly outside the cities, and the regional service is even worse than the intercity, a 70 km route from Timisoara to Arad takes 3 hours. There is no clock face scheduling, most routes get 6 trains per day at most. The most amerika-core train system in europen. The train service to Vienna is pretty nice and convenient, the sleeping carriages are comfortable

14. U-OV. 7/10

The 2-branched tram line is pretty good, with long vehicles and really fast speeds, outside of that the regional train stops outside of Utrecht Centraal have very low frequency and the busses do not feed enough onto them, they take really long winding routes as well, and recently their reliability has dropped very low after changing operator (they change concession every 12 years). The concession system is honestly so befuddling, thankfully legislation was recently changed so more provinces can start their own public transport operating companies. They should add more infill stations on their Regional train lines, with one extra track at the stations aorund the edge of the city, so they can run extra urban trains, and add extra tracks to the stations on double track sections so they can have more service.

15. Eindhoven Bravo 7/10

"We do not need a tram in Eindhoven" True you need a metro, or another regional line going from Woensel to Veldhoven via Centraal, with more infill stations for regional trains especially on the 4 track segment between Centraal and Best. If you take the bus around Eindhoven, 95% of routes just go the the central train station, the busses are often on time and pretty fast (line 9 from Best to Eindhoven Centraal takes 22 minutes to parcourse ~12 kms) but the Central bus station is just the worst ever, you do not know when your bus is coming until 1 minutes before departure, you have to walk thorugh so many busses departing, good thing is they are changing it so they have an underground thorugh running station under Eindhoven Centraal train station, but still questionable to stick to only busses, when such a bus station costs 600 million euros you might as well start investing in a light rail system, it is just so perpexing.

I tried to be short about my ratings, and they are just my personal opinion based on my travel experience using these services.