Domestic passenger rail services

Expanding capacity at breakneck speed

If Belgium is to solve its mobility crisis, it’s clear that domestic rail travel is pivotal. With domestic road transportation at bursting point and greenhouse gas pollution out of control, the emphasis on rail commuting couldn’t be more relevant. The equation is fairly simple: you can fit more people on a train. But balancing the equation—i.e., making it all work given the tremendous challenges and costs involved—is trickier.

Domestic rail certainly is growing rapidly: 45% growth in passenger numbers over the past 8 years. In 2008 more than 206 million rail trips were clocked, with this number expected to reach 230 million by 2012. To date, not even the economic crisis has affected these figures. It’s clear that domestic rail is absolutely critical to the functioning of Belgium’s transport system especially in the commuting sector and specifically in the commute to Brussels – where most of the growth is evidenced as companies and organisations continue to move in.

While realising that utilising rail to solve some of the gridlock problems in Belgium might seem a ray of sunshine, it’s quickly obscured by heavy clouds: there’s simply a lack of capacity. In fact, the situation is even more complex than that. Firstly, it’s important to appreciate that the Belgian rail network is built in a star shape format – in the morning most of the trains travel into Brussels, with the reverse happening in the evening. While Brussels is the key hub, it’s also the key bottleneck, especially the north-south connection passing underground through central Brussels. With a tremendous amount of trains needing to pass through this stretch of tunnel, capacity has pretty much already been reached. However solutions are afoot, and are being tackled on several fronts; some from SNCB as the rail operator and some from the infrastructure company involved, namely Infrabel.

For many years SNCB’s approach has been to expand capacity by increasing the frequency as well as the length of trains. While new planning software might be able to increase frequency marginally, both of these stopgaps are in danger of being steamrollered with the massive increase in demand.