De Lijn’s bus problem continues: 300 with more than 1 million km

Figures requested by Flemish member of parliament An Christaens (CD&V) show that the public transport company De Lijn has more than 300 buses with more than 1 million kilometers on the counter.

Because of this outdated bus fleet, De Lijn is increasingly struggling with technical problems, and passengers are paying the toll.

De Lijn has been struggling with an aging fleet and infrastructure for years and has 2,133 buses in service. Almost half of them are older than ten years, and 300 have more than 1 million km on the clock.

Logical consequence: last year, an average of 20% of the monthly buses were out of service due to technical problems. In August, as many as 522 of the 2,133 vehicles were sidelined with breakdowns.

Some 634 De Lijn buses, already 15 years old, are still in circulation, which means higher maintenance costs. However, maintaining existing buses can sometimes be cheaper than replacing them.

To keep the fleet up to date, 1 in 15 buses must be replaced yearly, roughly equivalent to 145 buses. De Lijn has not met that goal for years. Only 29 buses were replaced in 2024, and replacements in 2023 (90), 2022 (63), and 2021 (97) were also heavily below the objective.

Flemish government is to blame

In other words, these are once again figures that prove unequivocally that De Lijn, with an annual budget of about 1 billion euros, either lacks the financial means to renew its fleet regularly or pursues a poor policy. In both cases, the Flemish government is to blame anyway.

When De Lijn’s new transport plan was introduced last year, the Court of Audit made firewood of the amateurish way in which its policy preparation, regulation, and elaboration had been carried out.

The parliamentary institution also found that the plan was unclear about how problems such as transport poverty would be remedied or how specific objectives, such as a 7.5% passenger gain, would be achieved.

Only 86 e-buses

Meanwhile, the new Flemish government has invested 400 million euros extra in renewing the bus fleet, which would purchase at least 500 buses. Whether that additional money is enough to ensure that Flemish people can once again count on good, reliable, and safe public transport remains to be seen.

By 2025, for example, all De Lijn buses must run electrically. Because of that recent investment and the previous government order, according to Flemish member of parliament Bogdan Vanden Berghe (Groen), you currently come out at roughly 1,000 new buses out of a fleet of more than 2,000.

“Right now,only 86 e-buses are driving around in Flanders,” Vanden Berghe says in the newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.”That’s barely 4%. More investment will be needed.”

In an interview last weekend with the business newspaper De Tijd, the September installed new Flemish Minister of Mobility Annick De Ridder (N-VA) said this: “For every euro a traveler pays, the taxpayer puts 6 to 7 euros on top. My predecessor refused to index that ticket price. It’s a huge drain. De Lijn will soon have autonomy over fares. For the people who are now going to scream blue murder, know that De Lijn is one of the cheapest transport companies in Europe. I was not elected to hand out gifts. I must put the accounts for taxpayers.”

Data show that Wallonia spends more per capita on public transportation than Flanders. Specifically, the Walloon region spends about 353 euros per capita, while Flanders spends about 207 per capita. But public transport in sparsely populated areas costs more anyway.

The company car system in Belgium also offers many tax advantages to the owner of such a car that a public transport user without a car does not have. According to calculations, a company car costs the state an average of 3,500 euros annually. This means the system causes the Belgian state to lose 2 billion in tax revenue annually.

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