NS puts Rotterdam Centraal to Amsterdam Zuid at under 40 minutes on the Intercity direct, and lists the time saved against the ordinary route as 25 minutes, which puts the alternative at roughly 65 minutes (NS on the Intercity direct). That 25-minute gap is the only part of the comparison a timetable settles. The walk to the station, the wait, the change and the last kilometre are yours to measure, and on a short trip they usually decide the answer.

Count from the front door, not the platform

Pick one ordinary journey with a real purpose and a real deadline: a library, a class, a hospital appointment, a Sunday lunch. Write the day, the arrival time that cannot slip, what has to be carried and who is travelling. Then each person states their own requirements — a seat, a lift, a maximum cost, a return before dark — instead of guessing them from the other person's age.

One of you times the walk from the door to the stop with a phone; the other reads the operator's planner for the vehicle leg and the connection. Both numbers go in the same column, because a journey that is fast between stations and slow at both ends is not a fast journey.

One route, measured end to end

As an example, take Rotterdam Centraal to Amsterdam Zuid on a weekday, using NS's under-40-minute Intercity direct figure and the 25 minutes it says the ordinary route costs (NS), with the two walking figures measured rather than assumed: 12 minutes from the front door to the platform, 8 minutes of waiting, and a 10-minute ride at the far end.

  • Intercity direct: 12 + 8 + 40 + 10 = 70 minutes.
  • Ordinary intercity: 12 + 8 + 65 + 10 = 95 minutes.

The 25-minute difference survives the door-to-door sum because the walk, the wait and the last leg are identical in both. That is the useful test: when a gap survives the parts you share, it is real; when it disappears, the faster train was never the thing that mattered.

One caution on price. NS requires an Intercity direct Supplement in addition to the NS ticket when travelling on the Intercity direct or Eurocity Direct between Schiphol Airport and Rotterdam Centraal, and says the supplement is not required between Amsterdam Zuid and Rotterdam Centraal on an international Eurocity Direct ticket (the same NS page). Check which section your leg falls in before comparing two fares.

What the last kilometre costs

The final stretch is where a comparison is usually abandoned, so price it. An OV-fiets costs from €4.80 per 24 hours with no hourly rate, rises to €9.80 a day after three days, can be kept for a maximum of seven days, and is available at almost 300 hire locations; one season ticket lets you hire two bikes, which matters when two people arrive on the same train (NS on the OV-fiets). The bike must go back to the same location, and the hire only stops when the ring lock is closed.

Add that €4.80 to the train fare and the comparison becomes honest. Leave it out and the car, which parks near the entrance, quietly wins a race it was not running.

Mark an option unsuitable before you score it

An option that fails a necessary condition is out, not marked down. A step-free entrance that does not exist is not compensated by a cheaper fare. Write "unsuitable" in the row and stop scoring it, then rank whatever survives on the things that are genuinely preferences: fewer changes, a chance to talk, a shorter walk in the rain.

The EEA's 2025 assessment of Europe's mobility systems, published on 10 February 2026, puts passenger cars at around 72% of Europe's transport activity measured in passenger-kilometres, and notes that public transport's share of total passenger transport has changed very little (the EEA report). A single door-to-door comparison will not move that figure, and it is not supposed to. What it can do is tell two people whether one specific trip, on one specific day, works without the car.

After the trip, compare planned against actual and write down which part caused the difference. If the answer is that the alternative never existed, that belongs in the map of trips you cannot easily change. If it is worth a rehearsal, do it properly with a familiar trip by public transport. And if either of you reaches for a carbon figure to settle the argument, read why two travel carbon estimates disagree before quoting one.

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