Liège’s streetcar finally makes its comeback after 60 years

“A historic day” is what Willy Demeyer, the socialist mayor of Liège, called yesterday the first return after nearly 60 years of the streetcar to the center of the Cité ardente for a first test. “This streetcar will revolutionize mobility, the environment, and the economy,” De Meyer said.

On August 31st, 1964, the streetcar made its last route in the heart of Liège before its last streetcar was decommissioned in November 1967. The streetcar was taken out of service because the equipment was obsolete and would be too expensive to replace. Modern buses would be more profitable. But now, the streetcar in Liège is making its glorious return.

Pricetag of €500 million

On Tuesday, the future streetcar of the Walloon public transport company TEC made a symbolic test run, at 5 km/hour, through the center of Liège, past the town hall toward the train station.

In contrast to 60 years ago, when everyone was relieved to see the streetcar disappear from the city center, a very different mood prevailed in the city with nothing but happy faces and lots of applause and cheering.

The long-awaited return of the tramway – the prestige project was delayed for two and a half years, and the costs kept rising, up to 500 million euros – should make life in the city more pleasant and relieve traffic congestion.

The TEC buses had reached saturation point with nearly 4,000 daily bus crossings. In Liège, the second most populous municipality in Wallonia with 2,845 inhabitants per km², the number of TEC trips doubled in ten years to 93 million trips per year, and just over one in three TEC group users comes from the Liège region.

However, adding additional buses would only have increased the number of vehicles on the roads and caused longer traffic jams during rush hours.

Streetcar throughout the Liège metropolis?

That’s why, since 2007, when the project started, the streetcar has been considered again as a solution. The new streetcar can carry about 300 passengers along the 12-km stretch in its own bed. During peak hours, the streetcar should run every 4.40 minutes, and additional high-quality service buses (BHNS) will also be put in toward Ans and Fléron.

For the maintenance of the network, a 29-year concession was chosen within a so-called PPP formula. A PPP is a public-private partnership in which the private partner, in this case the Tram’Ardent consortium, which includes the Spanish company CAF, makes the investment, and the government pays an annual annuity for maintenance.

If all goes well, the official inauguration of the Liège streetcar should come on January 31st, 2025. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what the new Walloon government intends to do with the files of the two extensions planned by the previous government toward Herstal (where work has already begun) and Seraing.

The last extension, excluding the actual streetcars running on it, was planned to cost 105 million euros, but the works would now cost 355 million euros.

The intention is that the tramway would not be limited solely to the city of Liège but would serve all of the Liège metropolis.