Belgium’s state-owned rail company NMBS wants to postpone the second phase of its transport plan due to a lack of train drivers and train conductors. The planned delay is detailed in an internal NMBS memo seen by VRT News. The document will be discussed by the NMBS board this week. How long the postponement could last is not clear. The postponement means that the railway company is scaling back its ambitious plans for the future that it announced less than a year ago.
Home News
Belgian Rail scales back ambitious plans, eager to postpone expansion of services
Colin Clapson
Published:
The 2023-2026 transport plan aims to increase the number of kilometres you can travel by train by 7.4 per cent over a three-year period. ‘It’s the most ambitious transport plan ever, fully in line with the growth ambitions of the NMBS's 2023-2032 public service contract,’ the rail operator said in October last year.
It planned to roll out the transport plan in four phases: a first phase introduced in December last year, a second in December this year, a third in June 2025 and a fourth in December 2025.
Belgian Rail's internal memo speaks of the postponement of the second phase but does not specify how long that postponement should last. A six-month postponement is the minimum, because major changes to the timetable can only happen twice a year: in June and in December.
As the reason for the delay, Belgian Rail points to what it calls a lack of production resources, i.e. too few train drivers and train conductors.
The document will be discussed by the board this week. Trains in the evenings and weekends will especially be affected. The rail company lists the plans it believes should be postponed for now.
These include plans for the increase in the number of train services in the evenings and weekends.
Will this put passenger growth at risk?
‘NMBS's new transport plan aims to boost growth of passenger numbers (+30 per cent by 2032), for commuter, home-school and leisure travel,’ the company said as recently as last March.
Will that target still be realistic if the company’s plans are indeed scaled back? ‘It is highly questionable how this growth will be achieved,‘ says Peter Meukens of the passengers’ association TrainTramBus (TTB).
‘If the NMBS gets its way, the train services will not be harmonised across the week and weekends, though this is necessary.’
TTB has attacked the way the NMBS is going about things. ‘This is being done on the quiet without the municipalities involved knowing,’ says Peter Meukens.
‘I think that is a strange way of providing public services.’ He also complains that the Train Passenger Advisory Committee was not consulted. ‘However, the company’s public service contract stipulates that this is what should happen.’