2015 was worst year ever for traffic in Belgium

Budget cuts to public transport outside of Brussels will not contribute to improving the city’s traffic congestion, according to the Capital Region’s mobility minister, Pascal Smet. Smet was reacting to news from motoring organisation Touring that showed that traffic last year reached an all-time peak.

“We continue to invest in public transport in Brussels to increase quality and capacity,” Smet said. “The savings imposed by the federal government on the SNCB will certainly not solve the traffic jam problem.” Smet’s socialist party is no longer part of either the federal or the Flemish governments.

The Touring report showed there were motorway traffic jams of at least 100 kilometres for 1,200 hours during 2015 – the equivalent of 50 full days. On 46 of those days, the tailbacks were more than 300km across the country, and on seven occasions the jams reached above 400km.

On Saturday, 24 January, a record 716km of traffic was recorded, the result of ice and snow. The entire Belgian motorway network covers 3,000km.

More importantly, the level of structural traffic jams is growing. In 2015, tailbacks failed to drop below 100km on 50 days – a sign that the growing population and the growth of economic activity is causing the roads to become saturated.

More roads is not the answer, Smet said. “That will only attract more cars. If one-third of the 250,000 commuters who drive in and out of Brussels daily would share their cars, we’d have a lot less traffic. We have the technology to bring people together; now the three regions need to work out a policy to encourage that. What we need is a sort of Tinder for car-pooling.”

Photo: Francois Lenoir/Reuters/Corbis