The new Arizona government is bursting with ambition, but as far as rail traffic is concerned it is sticking to the last Vivaldi government's objectives: 30 per cent more rail passengers, more than 90 per cent of trains to run on time, half of all trains to be new ones and a 30 per cent reduction in the number of cancelled trains.
Belgium’s state-owned rail company NMBS and rail track operator Infrabel will have to organise themselves differently. Above all, the government wants rail transport to become ‘demand-driven’. This is reminiscent of the reform at Flemish public transport company De Lijn initiated a few years ago, with the shift from basic mobility to basic accessibility.
The NMBS’s offerings will be tailored to the ‘real needs of travellers, prioritising lines with high passenger numbers and by reducing the number of train stops at places with low demand.’ In human terms, stops visited by fewer passengers will get fewer trains. Stations where only a handful of people take the train daily will close permanently. This is the opposite of what the previous mobility minister Gilkinet wanted: a train every half hour in every station.
Larger economic centres will need more frequent suburban services. This may well be possible certainly to Brussels where there are more and more routes with two tracks in every direction. These trains will also get better transfer opportunities to De Lijn, the Walloon operator TEC and the MIVB in Brussels.
A train network on the Swiss model
The coalition agreement also speaks of the ‘switch to offerings based on the Swiss model.’ That phrase clearly bears a Flemish nationalist N-VA stamp. For years, the party has advocated scrapping transnational lines - ‘Nobody commutes from Ostend to Eupen or from Antwerp to Charleroi’ - and introducing shorter, decentralised train connections tailored to actual commuter traffic.
Thanks to this decentralisation, the new government also wants to tackle the problem of massive rail delays. Brussels plays a pivotal role. At present many train services pass through the congested Brussels north-south link. The government recognises that even if long transnational connections are abandoned Brussels still has too little capacity for through-traffic. It plans to examine ways to increase that capacity. You could run more trains via the ‘west track’ (via Molenbeek and Koekelberg) or via the ‘east track’ (via Etterbeek and the European District).
Another option could be to drill a new rail tunnel for international trains under the centre of Brussels to make more room for domestic trains on the current north-south link. It’s an idea already floated by Infrabel in 2019 with the announcement of a feasibility study. It remains a very long-term project. The question is whether the money needed will ever be found and whether it is technically feasible.
Carpooling more attractive and ‘social leasing’ for EVs for everyone
Electric cars are still relatively expensive. The new government wants to investigate whether it is possible to make such cars available to employees under a certain income threshold via social leasing.
The plan is to make carpooling more interesting financially thanks to additional tax breaks. This should be available to all employees and ‘not only to staff in companies that organise and support this kind of travel.’