The purpose of this article is analysing the city’s mass transport networks in order to determine exhaustively and rigorously the places that pose problems and require priority intervention.

At a time when mobility in Brussels is becoming increasingly critical from the standpoints of the environment and efficiency, this article gives a detailed and exhaustive analysis of the geography of traffic conditions affecting the trams and buses of Brussels’ main mass transit network.

The finely disaggregated data that the authors were able to obtain from the Brussels Interborough Transport Company (STIB/MIVB) enabled us to calculate and map three indicators (commercial speed, irregularity, and lost time) that make it possible to identify the network’s problem spots. The figures show that, in the current state of affairs, fewer than a third of the city’s tram line segments meet the commercial speed performance levels that they are expected to achieve under STIB/MIVB’s new management contract. The problem spots, which are found primarily but not solely in the first urban ring (from Saint-Gilles/Sint-Gillis to Schaerbeek/Schaarbeek, via Ixelles/Elsene), stem basically from a mixture of roads and public areas that are narrow and/or heavily used by cars, inappropriate traffic light management, and political stalemates that make it impossible to get around the first three factors. In this framework, the regional mobility and sustainable development plans can scarcely be achieved.

Xavier Courtois, is a geographer and researcher at Brussels Free University’s Environmental Management and Spatial Planning Institute (ULB-IGEAT, Brussels). His final thesis, entitled “Géographie de la vitesse commerciale sur le réseau de la STIB”, dealt with the geography of performance in Brussels’s major mass transport network. His current research focuses on social inequality in connection with the current processes of re-metropolisation.

Frédéric Dobruszkes has a PhD in geography and is a senior lecturer at ULBs Environmental Management and Spatial Planning Institute (ULB-IGEAT). He is currently carrying out postdoctoral research into European cities’ accessibility by air under the aegis of the Prospective Research for Brussels programme. His article entitled “Eléments pour une géographie sociale de la contestation des nuisances aériennes à Bruxelles” (on the social geography of opposition to noise from air traffic in Brussels) was published in issue 2008/1 of Espace, Populations, Sociétés.

Published in Brussels Studies, the e-journal for academic research on Brussels.

The findings presented here confirm the worrisome lack of efficiency that characterises a large part of the STIB/MIVB tram and bus network in Brussels. Slow commercial speeds and highly irregular service, sometimes the two together, mark many of its segments. This often contributes to mass transport’s poor performance, further dissuading potential users from getting on board. Need we point out that by making a route between two points problematic, a single problematic segment can suffice to cancel out all the efforts made elsewhere?

Of course, the topology of Brussels’ public thoroughfares does not make running buses and trams easier, nor does it facilitate the taking of measures that would not interfere with automobile traffic or parking. However, we must remember that a trip to a number of cities elsewhere in Europe is enough to show that many public authorities have made their mass transport systems more efficient than they used to be despite narrow streets that are barely any better than in Brussels. You do not have to have broad boulevards to separate automobile traffic from mass transport and manage traffic lights in the latter’s favour. The recent inauguration of the Marseilles tramway shows that a first effort could be made along the routes of the city’s two new lines, even in a Mediterranean city where cars are everywhere and occupy practically every inch of available land, including many sidewalks and squares. If Brussels’s public authorities truly want sustainable mobility, that is, mobility that reduces the volume of automobile traffic and guarantees the possibility of moving about in the long term, the regional and – perhaps even more so – borough authorities will indeed have to change their ways and explain to their constituents that the current situation will be untenable in the medium term.

Université Libre de Bruxelles
Bruxelles
www.ulb.ac.be
Xavier Courtois (Researcher), tel. 0032 2 650 50 71

23/06/2008

Xavier Courtois and Frédéric Dobruszkes

research

Urban Policy > Transport and infrastructure

Public transport