The Belgian public railway company NMBS/SCNB has always been a lukewarm supporter of access gates in train stations. This idea has been raised several times in the past and was also mentioned in the coalition agreement, but has now been shelved by NMBS/SNCB after a “negative business case.”
According to Minister of Mobility Jean-Luc Crucke (Les Engagés), “the resources required would outweigh the benefits that NMBS/SNCB could derive from it, not only commercially and financially, but also socially.
‘Negative return on investment’
According to the study, which looked at the installation of gates in at least 18 train stations, including the major ones, the costs of installing and maintaining the gates are much higher than the extra revenue they generate due to reduced fraud.
“Even in the best-case scenario, the estimated revenues do not cover the necessary investments, leading to a negative return on investment,” said Crucke in his response to a question from Member of Parliament Dorien Cuylaerts (N-VA).
In addition, ticket offices and ticket machines would sometimes have to be relocated, a different solution would have to be worked out for each station, and station shops would see a drop in turnover because fewer people would be passing through.
No public cost-benefit analysis yet
It is striking, however, that no exact figures on the costs of installing the gates have been shared. Figures from NMBS/SNCB show that 7% of passengers are unable to present a valid ticket when checked.
The railway company estimated that this would result in a loss of 26 million euros in revenue in 2023. Spread over ten years, that amounts to 260 million euros, which is a considerable sum.
Cuylaerts remains fond of the idea of access gates, which are currently only in place at Brussels Airport train station. “Good control in our stations is a must. There are still too many fare dodgers,” she says. “Currently, only train conductors and Securail carry out checks, and the chance of being caught is relatively lower than if we were to work with access gates.”
The N-VA member of parliament regrets that “the NMBS/SNCB has rejected the idea so quickly,” because examples from abroad, as well as the Brussels metro, show that access gates can indeed work. “I will put the issue on the agenda in parliament. I want to look at and study the report, because we continue to believe in the usefulness of gates in modern public transport,” concludes Cuylaerts.
Nearly €9 million in graffiti removal costs
Minister Crucke also informed the Chamber that NMBS/SNCB spent 8.8 million euros last year on removing graffiti from trains. This involved 8,483 incidents of graffiti on more than 2,100 vehicles and a total surface area of 251,334 m². The number of graffiti removed by the cleaning teams remains very high but is stable compared to 2023.
The railway company received 382 reports of graffiti on railway property in 2024, and NMBS/SNCB officials issued 51 reports relating to graffiti. Only when perpetrators are caught in the act and correctly identified can NMBS/SNCB recover the costs from them.
