Belgian public railway company NMBS/SNCB wants to outsource the management of its 60 payable car parks to a commercial company. So writes the business newspaper L’Echo.

Sophie Dutordoir, CEO of NMBS/SNCB, is reported to have said so in the federal parliament a few weeks ago when she came to the Parliamentary Committee on Mobility for the annual hearing. Outsourcing the management would not lead to an increase in fares.

Almost 32 000 parking spaces

According to L’Echo, it would only concern the payable car parks, amounting to 31 770 spaces. Currently, the whole project is still in the study phase.

The new management contract that the federal government signed with NMBS/SNCB in December 2022 states that the railway company will have to build new car parks and renovate existing ones in the coming years to provide 80 000 spaces by 2032.

Over 100 000 car parking spaces are currently provided in station environments in Belgium. Of these, around 75 000 are on sites owned by NMBS/SNCB. Third parties, cities, or municipalities own the approximately 25 000 remaining parking spaces. They are, therefore, not car parks belonging to NMBS/SNCB, whose management has been transferred by the railway company.

Occupancy of 45%

In February this year, Minister of Mobility Georges Gilkinet (Ecolo) replied to a parliamentary question on car parks managed by NMBS/SNCB that the occupancy rate of car parks equipped with access control sat at 45%.

According to the minister, the decision to make a car park payable is based on at least one of the following elements: if the operating and maintenance costs are too high, the car parks are saturated by non-rail travelers or occasional travelers to the detriment of season ticket holders, the local authority decides to make the parking spaces on the roads near the car park paying, or if the car park of a nearby station has become payable.

Furthermore, in urban areas, offering free parking “can be detrimental to mobility and the environment, as it draws in more and more vehicles causing traffic jams with a negative impact on air quality”.

Barrier

NMBS/SNCB continuously evaluates its car parks. Based on this evaluation, steps may or may not be taken to make the parking in question payable. In that case, it always sits down with the municipality to coordinate the parking policy in the station area where possible.

NMBS/SNCB has been systematically increasing the number of payable car parks at its stations in recent years. In 2019, NMBS/SNCB’s car parks still brought in 15 million euros. A recurring criticism is that people who use the car daily see the lack of affordable parking spaces as a barrier to taking the train. A day ticket at a train station car park quickly costs between 7,40 and 11,40 euros.