Government agency | |
Industry | Rail Transport |
Founded | 2003 |
Headquarters | Utrecht, Netherlands |
Products | Rail Infrastructure Management, Railway Capacity Allocation, Traffic Control |
Revenue | € 1.260 billion (2006) |
€ 31 million (2006) | |
€ 0 (2006) | |
Number of employees
|
2,651 (2006) |
Website | http://www.prorail.nl |
In the Netherlands, ProRail (Dutch pronunciation: [proːˈreːl]) is a government task organisation that takes care of maintenance and extensions of the national railway network infrastructure (not the metro or tram), of allocating rail capacity, and of traffic control. Prorail is a part of NS Railinfratrust, the Dutch railway infrastructure owner. It consists of the following inframanagement organisations:
The rail capacity supplied by ProRail is used by several public transport operators:
as well as cargo operators, notably Railion, ERS Railways and ACTS.
And smaller FOC's like: Rail4Chem (now owned by Veolia), Veolia Cargo, Rotterdam Railfeeding, Bentheimer Eisenbahn, HGK, Portfeeders (part of ACTS), and SNCF Fret
Its Utrecht headquarters is in the former offices of Nederlandse Spoorwegen (known as De Inktpot, "The Inkwell"), the largest brick building in the Netherlands. The building currently features a "UFO" on its facade resulting from an art program in 2000.
Funding for ProRail is provided by a government subsidy, and a fee paid by the railway operators (called infraheffing). The government subsidy totalled around €2.5 billion from 2014-2017, and the infraheffing totalled approx. €200 million in 2006, the remaining income was listed as 'other'. The fee that the public transport operators have to pay for this is lower than the cost, but increasing. In 2003 it was €0.64 per train km and €0.54 to €2.16 for stopping at a station.