From January 2026, Volvo Car Gent will discontinue its own bus transport service for its approximately 6,500 employees. The decision to terminate the private bus service comes as no surprise: only 98 employees still use the service.
The bus service had, therefore, become too expensive to continue. Together with the personnel department, a solution is being sought for employees who will have difficulty getting to work.
1.5% of the workforce makes use of the bus service
Like Ford Genk at the time, Volvo Car Gent also has its bus service to transport employees to the site. In the early 1970s, when the company started its bus transport service, most employees did not yet own cars, and public transport was often inadequate.
In addition, by offering this service, the company also aimed to attract people from outside the Ghent region to work for Volvo Car Gent.
However, over the years, the number of users of the company’s bus service has continued to decline, to just 98 bus users currently, or 1.5% of the current workforce.
Over €3,000 per user
At present, an external bus company still operates five routes in three shifts: the Leupegem region, the Oudenaarde region, the Eeklo region, the Kruishoutem region, and the Lede region. Still, due to the enormous cost for a small number of users, Volvo Car Gent has now decided to discontinue the service from next year.
According to the company, the cost amounts to more than 300,000 euros per year for the 98 users, or an average of just over 3,000 euros per user per year. “In these times, it is simply no longer justifiable to run buses that are half-empty, and in some cases, even for just a few passengers or a handful of passengers, several times a day,” says Volvo Car Gent.
Public transport is not popular
Over the next four months, the company will collaborate with the personnel department to find a solution for employees who will experience difficulty commuting to work.
Review the figures for employee transportation in February of this year for Volvo Car Gent. You can see that out of a workforce of approximately 6,500 employees, 58.17% use their car, 26.46% carpool, 10.24% cycle, and 2.47% use a company car. At the bottom of the list are the Volvo bus users with 2.14%, a figure that has fallen further this month to 1.5%, and, finally, public transport with 0.53%.
Lack of easy access
The low usage rate of public transport in particular raises questions. “We work in three shifts, like many port companies,” explains spokesperson Barbara Blomme. “The morning shift starts at 5:15 a.m., for example, and no trains are running at that time.”
Blomme also points out that Volvo Car Gent, together with Volvo Trucks, DSV, Katoennatie, and North Sea Port, joined forces last year to identify the mobility issues in the port area, propose solutions, and implement them.
The modal split for this cluster of companies shows that the number of public transport users is disappointingly low at just 2.5%.
Volvo Car Gent, together with other port companies, will continue to actively raise the issue of the lack of easy access to the port companies by public transport with both Ghent aldermen Sofie Bracke (Open Vld) and Joris Vandenbroucke (Vooruit), who are responsible for Economy and Port and Mobility, respectively, as well as with Flemish Minister of Mobility and Ports Annick De Ridder (N-VA). This concerns both subsidies and infrastructure.
