[sokoloff]

I’m from US and periodically visit Netherlands for work; on my most recent trip, some local colleagues dropped me at the train station for the ride to AMS. They kindly asked me if I knew how to buy the tickets and were shocked when I said I just my OV card. Neither had one (which I thought was equally surprising).

[Aachen]

There's some 14 million cards active on a population of 18 million. That they don't have one surprises me also! But yeah, there are some stubborn car people, particularly in the more rural places when you aren't often in a place with good public transport connections. Having one is essentially free, though, so there's not really a reason to not keep one on hand for when you do visit any of the cities anywhere in the country. It's more of a "I hate shared transport so much that I refuse to even look at how this card system works" type of mentality.

Note that "rural" in NL means civilization is virtually always <5 minutes driving but there's still no public transport to speak of (a bus might come once an hour between 8 and 19 'o clock... going home after an evening of visiting family or going out? Tough luck).

(Rant: The bus companies keep reducing frequency, operating hours, and stop count due to unprofitability and, guess what? Line profitability keeps going down! It's surprising, really. When it's made so inconvenient to use mass transit, why would anyone choose to buy a car? It's beyond anyone's understanding..!)