- Daily & Weekly newsletters
- Buy & download The Bulletin
- Comment on our articles
Related articles
Recent
Popular
Belgian trains among least reliable in Europe
A new study has confirmed what many commuters already knew: Belgian trains are among the least punctual in Europe.
In 2017, the Belgian rail service performed the worst among the 13 European countries compared by Prime, the European platform of rail infrastructure managers.
A longer comparison from 2012 to 2017 puts Belgium second-bottom in the punctuality league table. Only Italian trains were less reliable.
The study defines "on time" as any train that reaches its destination no more than 5.5 minutes late. The most punctual trains in Europe can be found in Latvia, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Belgian rail infrastructure firm Infrabel says the design of the country's rail network does not help. Hundreds of trains per day pass through Brussels' congested north-south rail junction - where the slightest delay can have widespread consequences.
However Infrabel said that punctuality on Belgian trains was improving. According to its own internal stats, 90.7% of trains ran on time in the first four months of this year.
Comments
Fire them all and hire people who take pride in their work.
If you ask them to work harder and to be on time and to serve the passengers better they will go to the doctor and get a note saying that they suffer from "burnout"....
The notion of customer service does not exist in Belgium. This is just more of same.
Possibly a more accurate standing would be calculated if the density of each country's network and the size of each country were taken into account. Belgium has one of the densest networks and a very high number of trains, nearly 4000 trains per day and that doesn't include the international trains.? And obviously, the fact that most of those trains have to go through the Midi-Central-Nord corridor needs to be addressed, however the solution is very costly...
As for the employees my extensive experience is that they have great pride of work.
(one of the densest networks ?) hmmm less than Austria, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands and the U.K. ...that doesn't leave many countries..... (however the solution is very costly)...nahhhh...the solution is easy, fire them and let the Dutch run everything, they do a much better job.
Paradox; 1) No they are not denser. Your lack of research is screamingly obvious when you include the UK.
2) The Dutch can't run a high speed train for anything (compare time Paris to northern Belgian border and Northern Belgian border to Amsterdam) so why have them run anything?
3) If everything in Belgium is as terribly awful as most of you comments on various articles would indicate, why don't you leave???
Paradox; 1) No they are not denser. Your lack of research is screamingly obvious when you include the UK.
2) The Dutch can't run a high speed train for anything (compare time Paris to northern Belgian border and Northern Belgian border to Amsterdam) so why have them run anything?
3) If everything in Belgium is as terribly awful as most of you comments on various articles would indicate, why don't you leave???