The City of Bruges is looking into the idea of charging visitors to the West Flemish capital to ride the electric bus that tours the city centre. The bus is currently free but in future tourists could have to pay, while Bruges residents continue to get a free ride.
Will Bruges discriminate against tourists? Visitors to pay for free city centre shuttle
Colin Clapson
Published:
The shuttle was introduced to take local people to neighbourhoods in the old city centre where Flemish public bus company De Lijn no longer operates bus services. Nowadays it is often choc-a-bloc with tourists carrying lots of luggage. That was not the initial intention.
200,000 passengers use the free bus service every year. ‘Today half the passengers are tourists, only half are local residents,’ explains Mayor Dirk De fauw. ‘People from Bruges often ask us: ‘Who is the shuttle bus for anyway? Isn't it for us locals, so we can catch a ride home or in our neighbourhood and to the shops?'
‘The electric buses are very small. When tourists board at the railway station with all their luggage, they take up quite a bit of space.’
Annual investment of €900,000
The city authorities have already taken unusual steps to make the city centre bus less attractive to tourists. The word ‘free’ was removed from the buses, but the impact of that measure was minimal. Charging a fare should discourage more tourists from piling onto the tiny buses in future.
‘The thing is, in many cases, tourists can use De Lijn buses that charge a fare or take a taxi. And if not, they will still be able to pay for the shuttle bus.’
‘The city of Bruges invests around 900,000 euros annually to run the bus. To keep it free for tourists - which of course would be ideal - we would have to deploy many more vehicles. But that would cost a tidy amount!’
Not just yet
Bruges doesn’t intend to start charging tourists immediately. The city authorities first want to discuss the matter with transport company De Lijn: ‘De Lijn used to have a monopoly on fare-charging public transport. Now cities and municipalities may also organise public transport, provided they have an agreement with De Lijn. That needs to be discussed first.’
‘Either De Lijn takes responsibility for the entire shuttle service or we come to a system where only tourists have to pay. We haven’t yet worked out how this will work in practice.’
How much a ride on the centre bus will cost tourists is not yet clear either.