‘We are taking De Lijn to court’

Wichelen wants better public transport and is going to court. Nevertheless, TreinTramBus finds it a strange decision. ‘That a transport regional council makes a decision to the detriment of another that is not in it, is indeed a problem. But De Lijn has nothing to do with that.’

Striking news: the municipality of Wichelen is taking De Lijn to court. The new transport plan is not right, they say in the East Flemish municipality. ‘People used to have a bus to Wetteren or Dendermonde every hour. That was an important and frequently used line, because it also passes the hospital’, explains mayor Kenneth Taylor (Samen).

‘Unfortunately, since the new transport plan, far fewer buses pass here. During the week, we go from 21 to 12 buses, and in the weekend from 19 to 0. We have already had several consultations with De Lijn, but that has not yielded much. “If we have to change something,” they say, “then everything falls apart.”‘

For Wichelen, the new transport plan is particularly drastic, Taylor continues. ‘It really lives in our municipality: everyone complains about it. People hardly get to the hospital anymore. That is why we are now going to court, although we still hope that we will reach an agreement with a mediator.’

Consolation

Curious what TreinTramBus thinks about that. Chairman Peter Meukens does not want to say whether Wichelen should get more or fewer buses. ‘I do not know the local situation well enough for that.’

He does find it a strange decision to go to court. ‘You have to make a distinction between the core network and the supplementary network’, he says. ‘The core network provides connections between large residential areas and schools. De Lijn decides on that autonomously. Suppose this were about a bus line from the core network, then Wichelen would be quite right to sue De Lijn. But it is about a bus line from the supplementary network: they supplement the main lines. They often serve village centres and usually stay within the region. De Lijn is allowed to make a proposal about those bus lines, but they have no decision-making power over them. The transport regional councils do. And Wichelen is in that, like every municipality.’

So they should have banged on the table a little harder?

‘It does seem like that, yes.’

Hello, Mayor?

‘That’s right’, says Kenneth Taylor. ‘But the decision to cut back on our bus line was taken in the Ghent transport regional council, because that’s where the bus leaves from. We don’t belong there, we are in the Aalst transport regional council. By the way, they pretend that all decisions in the transport regional council are taken democratically. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those transport regional councils are just one big farce. I’m not the only one who says that, everyone thinks the same.’

Peter Meukens of TreinTramBus understands this. ‘The responsibility is far too fragmented, we have been complaining about that for so long. In those transport regional councils, a lot of money is put on the table. “Solve it”, they say. You can say that the general interest comes first, but of course every mayor will mainly advocate for more buses in his municipality. In the meantime, the budget remains the same. Anyone who wants more buses has to threaten another mayor, so to speak. Of course that is not right.’

A consolation for Wichelen: a new bus line has recently been running through the municipality. Bus 21, from Mere to Zele. ‘That is very poor consolation’, says the mayor. ‘That bus stops in front of the town hall. I have never seen anyone get on there.’