Train punctuality on the rise thanks to 'joint effort', says SNCB
Train punctuality in Belgium reached 89.5 per cent last month. This is the best result for October in more than a decade - excluding the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 - the railway company SNCB announced on Thursday.
SNCB considers a train to be punctual if it arrives at its destination or in Brussels either on time or with a delay of less than six minutes. In October 2023, 85.5 per cent of trains were punctual.
According to the operator, trains have been running more punctually for almost all of 2024. From January to October, train punctuality was 89.7 per cent, compared to 88.0 per cent in the same period last year.
Additional figures from Infrabel's opendata website show that 4,025 trains were partially or totally cancelled in October, or 3.8 per cent of all trains. This is also slightly better than in October last year.
Joint effort
"The improved punctuality figures are the result of a joint effort. There has been an improvement in all the causes that lead to unpunctuality," says SNCB.
SNCB has recently started working with railway infrastructure manager Infrabel to better understand the causes of train delays. Every train that is 1.5 minutes or more late is investigated.
The railway company itself is responsible for more than a third of all delays. The others are Infrabel and third parties, which include people on the tracks, accidents at level crossings and cable theft.
"There has been an improvement in all the causes that lead to unpunctuality"
The most significant incident in October was an accident involving a person at Brussels Central on 11 October. This led to 168 cancellations and 7,800 minutes of delay.
PHOTO © John THYS / AFP
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