Double train tracks in Brussels' station areas, says rail CEO

The number of railway tracks around Brussels should be doubled in areas where there are stations to prevent the future express rail network (Gen) from interfering with traffic on the normal inter-city lines, according to Jo Cornu, chief executive of the national rail authority SNCB.

“I’m in favour of broadening out to four tracks, but I don’t want to do what has been done in the past and promise people that their children and grandchildren will one day see a top-performing service,” Cornu said. “I want to make the railways more appealing now.”

Cornu also proposed increasing the capacity of the North-South connection in Brussels, which has become a bottleneck in recent years. For that seemingly impossible task, he has suggested driverless trains. “We’ve begun a study; if all goes well, the technology could be available by 2020.” Capacity, he said, could be increased by as much as 25%, with energy consumption coming down by the same proportion.

Federal mobility minister Jacqueline Galant has invited her regional counterparts to the first meeting of the new Inter-modality Platform, where Gen will be on the agenda. “Mobility problems don’t begin and end at the borders of a region,” she said. “All policy levels are involved. That’s why it’s useful for Belgium to have a common strategy, for which the railways will be an important structural axis.”

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