The Kennis Instituut Mobiliteit, a knowledge centre for mobility issues, has valued the importance of mobility in the Netherlands at €76 billion. NS used the results of that study to attach a certain value to each kilometre travelled by our passengers on our trains. We then multiplied the value per kilometre travelled by the total number of NS passenger kilometres in 2020, which yielded a total value of €3,616 million (compared with €8,128 million in 2019).
At the same time however, to the extent that passengers cannot entirely spend the time they need to travel from A to B in other useful ways, the total door-to-door travel time also generates social costs. This applies above all to time lost due to delays and to time spent in overcrowded trains (for example due to a lack of seating). This negative impact of time spent travelling amounted to €2,722 million in 2020 (compared with €6,045 million in 2019).